


so people say

by notahotlibrarian



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Fantastic Four (Movies), Leverage, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AUs, Alcohol, Angst, Books, Charlie's Angels - Freeform, Clothing, Comfort, Crossover, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, Darcy with powers, Drabble Collection, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Haircuts, Implied abuse, Kid Fic, Mutant!Darcy, Natasha is a goober, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Plot Twists, Women Being Awesome, art talk, bad!Darcy, bartending, goddess!Darcy, ladies being friends, matchmaker!Natasha, messed up family trees, noir, possible trigger warnings, short fic, soul mates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 33
Words: 46,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1849108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notahotlibrarian/pseuds/notahotlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis-centric drabbles.  Additional tags and pairings to be added.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. bad boys and secrets (bucky/darcy)

**Author's Note:**

> I tend to collect quotes. As a writing challenge to myself, I'm writing a short piece to go along with each one. Enjoy!

**Bad boys and secrets are hard to keep**

When they had first started seeing each other, sneaking around gave Darcy a thrill. She was pulling one over on some of the best spies in the business. (Of course, that was probably more due to his skills than hers, but whatever.) However, it didn’t take long for the shine to wear off and for Darcy to want things to be a little more...public with the two of them. But when she broached it with him, he had stalked out.

That was a week ago.

She is moping in the lab one day when Jane said something that shocks her. “Did something happen with you and Barnes?” she asks after Darcy had sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time.

Darcy is so startled she falls out of the chair. “What? What are you talking about?” she asks, sprawled on the floor. “There is no me and Barnes,” she deflects.

Jane throws a pencil at her. “Don’t lie to me, Lewis. I saw the beard burn under your scarf. The only men in the Tower with facial hair are Thor, Stark, and Barnes. I know you’re not sleeping with the first two. Ergo, what happened with you and Barnes?”

Does flops down on the floor and groans loudly. “Ugh, does everyone know?” she whines.

Jane shrugs. “Probably. Superheroes gossip worse than middle schoolers.”

Darcy just groans again and covers her face with her hands. “I said something about maybe going out to dinner and a movie and it just...escalated until he just walked out.”

Jane rolls over from her workbench and lays down with Darcy on the floor. After a few moments of silence, Jane says conversationally, “You know what I realized when I started to date Thor?” Darcy grunts, and Jane takes that as a sign to continue. “He was the first guy I’d been with who bragged to his friends about my research.”

Darcy props herself up on her elbows and stares at Jane. “What are you trying to say, boss lady?”

Jane pulls herself back up as well. “That you should be with someone who is proud of you, no matter what the circumstances.” With those words of wisdom, she gets back in her chair, rolls back over to her workbench, and goes back to work re-calibrating one of her machines.

 

After some girding of her (mental) loins, Darcy tracks down Bucky to the gym. He and Natasha are sparring, and she watches for a few minutes. Their moves are primal, and something about the way they grin ferally as they circle each other just screams _foreplay_ in Darcy’s mind. As she watches, they execute a series of moves that end with Bucky pinning Natasha down to the floor. He looms over her, her wrists pinned under his hands, and after a few moments of chests heaving and sweat dripping, he kisses her.

Darcy throws the first item she finds (a 10-pound dumbbell) at his head. As it clatters to the floor, she braces herself for retaliation from one (or both) of them.

“I see now that you were never mine to make a claim on,” she says coldly, knees shaking from fear and anger as she stares at them. Before either of them can respond, she turns sharply on her heel and walks out.


	2. notorious (darcy&coulson)

**She wasn't a person who needed to be liked so much as she was a person who liked to be notorious.**

In certain electronic circles, there is a name quickly typed in the dark of the night before being immediately erased. Many are in awe of its deadly skill with binary code. Some say that they are responsible for the SHIELD leaks. Other say that they are the true power behind the Rising Tide. And a few even whisper that Delphii lives up to their mythological namesake, with knowledge of all the data out there residing in their well-guarded hard drive.

These rumors start to circle around the newly reformed SHIELD when several high-profile targets are imprisoned by their own security systems and practically gift-wrapped for SHIELD’s pickup.

“Skye, what have you got for me?” Agent Coulson asks, leaning over the young woman’s shoulder as streams of information flow across her computer screen.

“I’m good, but they’re better,” she huffs, bracelets on her wrist clanking angrily together as she types frantically.

Agents Barton and Romanoff exchange looks from their seats on the couch as Agent Coulson purses his lips together and starts to pace his office.

“Uh, guys? I think you need to see this,” Skye says after a few moments of silence. The screen is dark, when suddenly a line of text appears.

> **DO YOU WANT TO KNOW YOUR FUTURE?**

Skye’s jaw drops. “This- this is Delphii. That’s their signature.” She turns to Coulson and gives him an accusing look. “You didn’t tell me we were after Delphii!”

“Does it matter?” he asks tonelessly.

“Does it matter?” Skye all but shrieks. “You don’t go after Delphii. It’s one of those unwritten rules in the community. In return, they will often give you backdoor passwords or remove firewalls if you’re having extreme difficulties and they feel it is for a good cause,” she explains.

Coulson shoulders her out of the way and quickly types a response.

> **YES.**

Skye punches him in the shoulder as everyone waits with bated breaths for the response.

> **THE CARDS, THE CARDS, THE CARDS WILL TELL  
>  THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE AS WELL.**

Skye giggles, the only one to catch the reference, as Coulson’s phone chimes with an email notification. Curious, he opens it, only to find a confirmation for a reading of his tarot cards.

 

Mere blocks away, cigarette smoke obscures a young woman’s face as she watches information stream on a tablet. Ring-covered fingers idly shuffle a deck of tarot cards. A knit beanie covers wild curls, and a pair of glasses are tucked into the v-neck of an admittedly well-filled out shirt.

“Those things are going to kill you one day, you know!” her boss calls out to her. “That data finally finished compiling, so break’s over, Darcy.”

Delphii looks into the smoke before grinning. She always did have a knack for data.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote is from "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks" by e. lockhart


	3. red threads (darcy; jane/thor)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone's doing soul mate fic, so why shouldn't I?

**An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break.**

Ever since she was small, Darcy had been able to see the strings. They ran the gamut of shades of red, from the palest hint of color to a red so deep it was almost black. Some were perfectly straight, but many more were twisted and knotted and tangled. A few were frayed or torn, and one memorable thread looked to be precisely cut in two by a sharp blade.

As she grew, Darcy realized that these strings connected soul mates. Her maternal grandparents had a shining one, dimmed in color but straight and true. Her own parents' was convoluted and messy and had a few broken ends sticking out, but the color was a hopeful shade of pink. When she was small, she used to sneak out of her room and sit on the foot of their bed, working out the knots as best as she could with her tiny fingers.

At some point in college, she gained a reputation as a dating counselor of sorts. She often had just the right advice for a troubled boyfriend or girlfriend, and on a few memorable occasions had steered a jilted lover in a new direction towards happiness.

So when she moved into the Tower with Jane, it did not take long to resume her former role. Her first project, obviously, was Jane and Thor. Their thread was the red of a solar flare, and whenever Thor was in Asgard it shook off stardust as if dipped in it and then pulled taut. The thread often got caught and frayed on the various machines in Jane’s lab, as she was oft to put science first and people second. A few kind words in Jane’s ear about how lonely Thor looked (and one creative offer to take care of that loneliness if Jane was too busy) helped repair any damage that had been done.

After one memorable trip to Asgard (where the thread shone a sickly green underneath and had knotted back upon itself so many times Darcy did not know where to begin to untangle it) that her gift came to light. She had locked Jane and Thor in the lab to talk, with herself there to supposedly mediate. Her fingers were hidden in her lap, gently prodding at a rather stubborn knot. However, she gave a slightly too sharp tug and Thor suddenly looked up at her, eyes narrowing in concentration on her twitching hands.

“My lady mother’s hands used to move like so,” he said, almost accusingly.

Darcy shrugged and clasped her hands together. “Sorry! I have trouble sitting still,” she deflected.

Thor gravely shook his head. “Nay, I believe you to be one of the…” he paused for a moment, his All-Speak failing to translate his thoughts into English. “You see the threads, do you not?”

Darcy slumped in her chair and nodded. “What threads?” Jane asked, looking at Darcy’s hands.

Darcy straightened in her chair and wheeled over closer to them. “There’s a proverb from somewhere that says a red thread ties together those connected by fate. I can see those threads,” she explained. After a moment of internal debate, she added, “...and I can touch them.”

“But what does that mean?” Jane whined.

“I’ll show you,” Darcy said, grasping their thread firmly in both hands and closing her eyes in concentration. (She wasn’t sure this would work - she had only done once before when she was very young with her great-grandmother, who could also see them.) Jane’s soft gasp and the rumble of Thor’s murmurs made her open her eyes. “You can see it?” she asked nervously.

In unison, Thor and Jane nodded, awestruck. The line still had a sickly green glow, but it had lessened as Darcy’s gentle fingers and the couple’s conversation had run their course. The knots around their left ring fingers were still firmly tied, though, which made Darcy hopeful. “The color of the thread tells me what kind of love you have, while the knots and frayed edges are problems that you need to work on,” she explained. “I think the green glow is from whatever happened in Asgard. It should fade over time.”

Darcy ran skilled fingers over the thread, and flutters of images flowed through her brain. “Whatever enchantment that blonde had you under, it’s nothing that some honesty and wall-pounding sex won’t fix,” Darcy said to Thor with a cheeky grin on her face. With her work done, Darcy released the thread and it faded from their sight.

As she left the lab, she chanced a glance at her own left hand. A red thread dangled from her own ring finger, the end frayed and swaying beneath her palm. She sighed sadly and continued to her room. (But what she didn’t see was the tiniest thread repairing, reweaving, and extending from her to somewhere above in the Tower. With every decision made, fate can change course.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quote is an ancient Chinese proverb


	4. tobacco tin (bucky/darcy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sequel to "bad boys and secrets" (chapter 1)

**Saying more might push them both to a place they couldn’t get back from. He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lid rusted shut.**

**Toni Morrison, _Beloved_**

It wasn’t the invitation to go to dinner that drove him away, though he can tell that is what Darcy thinks. It was the way that she curled into his side after he woke from a nightmare the night before and murmured _love you_ into the scarred skin of his shoulder while still mostly asleep.

Love is something that he can never give her. Any love he once had in his body was torn out by the chair and men with needles and electricity. 

(Steve argues with him on this; how they can be like brothers if he says has no love to give? Steve never was afraid of that word the way he was. Bucky knows that in the end, everyone you love will leave you, just as he once left Steve.)

The last memory he has of love is with a woman with blood red hair and eyes that have seen too much. That love was ripped from him, and the hole where his heart used to be was welded shut by the men with electricity.

(Something rattles in his chest cavity whenever Darcy smiles at him with mischief in her eyes, the way she did when they met a year ago, when they first fucked six months ago. But it is not love.)

So he seeks out Natasha, intending to ask her about their time together. But because it is Natasha, he must earn those questions with sweat and blood.

They spar, and their bodies move more with memory than with conscious thought. Bucky eventually pins Natasha to the mats, and studies her face. He sees the answer to the question he is afraid to ask in the cut on her lip, and kisses her to find the answer. 

(The answer is that he is no longer Yasha, and she is no longer Natalia. Their pasts have been locked away where no one can find them, and with it their love.)

Something hits him in the ribcage and knocks him off of her. Darcy is standing in the doorway to the gym, vibrating with anger. “I see now that you were never mine to begin with,” she says before walking out the door. He can feel where the bone has cracked and something starts to leak out from that hole in his chest - something hopeful and broken and longing and hers.

Oh. So that is what love looks like.


	5. butter and whiskey (darcy/steve)

**What butter and whiskey will not cure there’s no cure for.  
 _Irish proverb_**

Steve finds her sitting at the table in the communal kitchen, sniffling as she reads a novel. There are tear tracks on her face, and steam is slowly rising from her mug of tea.

“Hey,” hey says quietly, leaning against the door frame. “Mind if I join you?”

This isn’t the first time they’ve met in the middle of the night. No one in the Tower has much of a regular sleep cycle, for a variety of different reasons. Darcy had started keeping a pot of hot water on the back of the stove during the night, and many of them take to sipping tea together while they wait for the nightmares to pass.

Darcy hastily wipes at her eyes and closes her book before gesturing towards the seat. Steve pours himself a cup of tea from the pot Darcy has resting on the back of the stove, and they sit in a melancholy but companionable silence. 

“Want to talk about it?” he asks gently after a few minutes. 

Darcy just exhales loudly and runs her fingers through her wild hair. “It’s just,” she starts, a faint flush rising on her face. “God, you’re going to think I’m so stupid.”

He leans across the table and cups her elbow. “I’d never think that,” he says sincerely, and she looks up at him with eyes bluer than the Atlantic Ocean. He feels like he’s drowning a second time over as he slides his hand down her arm to hold her hand.

She gives him a watery smile. “Thanks,” she replies, fiddling with her mug. “It’s just...I kinda have a hard time dealing with my emotions towards real life people. But I seem to have no problem empathizing with fictional characters. So sometimes, when I need a good cry, I’ll reread some of my favorite books that I know will make me cry. Just to, you know, get it all out of my system.”

He nods sagely. He may not understand, but he knows better than most people about dealing with your own problems in your own way. She cries over fictional characters; he boxes until his punching bags break. Who is he to judge? 

“Feel better?” he asks.

She shrugs. “A little.”

Steve stands and pulls her up from the table. “I know what could help,” he says, lips quirking in a lopsided grin. “Come with me.”

 

Darcy follows him wordlessly back to his suite, book clutched to her chest with one hand and her mug of tea in the other. He tells her to make herself comfortable on the couch, he’ll be right back. In the kitchen, he cuts thick slices of bread and slathers butter on the slices before briefly popping them in the microwave.

When Steve returns to his living room, plate of bread in one hand and bottle of Jameson in the other, Darcy is curled into the corner of the couch, sipping on her tea. He sits squarely in the middle of the couch and place the plate on the table before uncapping the whiskey and splashing some in his tea. He waves it teasingly in front of her face, and she begrudgingly holds her mug out, a hint of a smile hiding in her full lips. “What is this?” she asks as she signals him for enough whiskey.

“An rud nach leigheasann im ná uisce beatha níl aon leigheas air,” he says in (somewhat rusty) Gaelic.

She snorts into her mug. “And what is that supposed to mean?” she asks as she reaches for a slice of buttered bread.

“What butter and whiskey will not cure there is no cure for,” he answers. “It’s something I vaguely remember my da saying to my ma when I was little.”

She nibbles on her bread. “Your da sounds like a wise man.” 

Steve shrugs and changes the subject. “So what’s this book that makes you cry? Why do you like it so much?”

She starts to explain the premise of the plot to him - something about an exiled Russian countess posing as a maid in the house of a British lord. “The prose is just so...lush,” she says, and the animation he is used to seeing from Darcy is slowing creeping back in, loosening her posture and lighting up her face. “There’s this scene about playing that piano that just...slays me with its beauty. Every. Fucking. Time,” she says, smiling as she shakes her head at herself.

They talk idly as they finish off the plate of bread. Eventually, she falls asleep on his couch, and he tucks a blanket around her and goes to his own bed.

The next morning, she is gone, but coffee is percolating and her book is leaning against the coffeepot. Curious, he reads the first chapter...

 

A few nights later, they run into each other in the communal kitchen again. Steve’s nose is buried in Darcy’s book, and he’s only vaguely aware of the tears streaming down his face. A gentle hand on his shoulder breaks him out of the story.

“Piano scene?” Darcy asks, commiseration in her smile.

Steve wipes the tears from his face. “Fuck,” he breathes out, and a huff of laughter escapes her lips. 

She pats his shoulder as she gathers up her tray of mugs for the scientists. “If you like it, I have the rest of what she’s written,” she offers as she starts to return to the labs. “And plenty of butter and whiskey,” she adds with a grin.

He ruefully shakes his head. “I’m gonna need it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're curious, the book Darcy and Steve read is "A Countess Below Stairs" by Eva Ibbotsen. And yes, the piano scene gets me EVERY DAMN TIME.


	6. dress for it (darcy/clint)

**You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.  
 _Edith Head_**

If you asked Darcy what she wanted out of life, her list was pretty simple: free wi-fi everywhere, an endless supply of caramel macchiatos, world peace, and friends who wouldn’t bail you out of jail because they were sitting there right next to you.

Oh yeah, and Clint Barton.

However, he was not as amenable to her advances as she’d hoped he would be. Oh, he was interested - she could tell by the way he’d watch her mouth when she was chewing on her pens, or the way he would linger just a touch too long when they hugged.

Or you know, the fact that they had the most epic of makeouts once when they were both drunk.

But then came the speech about how he was too old and too broken and his job was too dangerous and how she shouldn’t tie herself to someone so fucked up. 

So she developed a plan.

(Actually, that was a lie. Darcy was terrible at plans. Come on, just look at her life. She had planned to be a speechwriter for politicians and look where she was now: Tony Stark’s personal assistant. She hadn’t yet decided if that was better or worse than what she had planned. So instead she went to Natasha and Natasha developed a plan.)

The plan was weird and convoluted and involved a lot of purple. She didn’t exactly understand how that was going to work, but Natasha assured her it would. In fact, Natasha said that if Clint wasn’t in her bed by Saturday, she would hogtie him to it. That mental image did things for Darcy, so either way, win-win.

 

On Monday, she wore some lavender-colored Converse. She had them propped up on the workbench as she reviewed Tony’s upcoming calendar events went Clint dropped in. (Like, literally dropped in from the vents. Whatever, she was used to it by now.)

He glanced at her before doing a double take. His gaze started at the scruffed-up toes of her purple shoes and slowly traveled up her jean clad legs, taking in their rips and tears before pausing on her worn-out Josie and the Pussycats t-shirt and then finally, finally making it to her face.

She arched an eyebrow at him. “See anything you like?” she asked teasingly as she tapped her stylus against her mouth.

“Nice Chucks,” he said after a long, drawn out moment. “Have you seen Tony?” 

She just pointed to the rat rod, where Tony’s feet were barely visible on a creeper underneath it. He muttered his thanks and then walked over there, glancing over his shoulder one last time at her.

Interesting. 

 

On Tuesday it was neon purple nail polish. As she wandered into the kitchen for breakfast, she found him staring at his cereal bowl. His hair was crazy messy and boy did she want to run her fingers through it.

So she did as she walked by.

He arched up into her touch, all but purring under her touch. “Morning,” she said, grinning at him as she pulled out her own bowl and cereal. She took a seat across from him at the table. “Pass the milk?”

He slid it wordlessly across to her, eyes darting to her hands. 

Very interesting.

 

Wednesday involved going to board meetings with Tony, so she paired a jewel-toned purple pencil skirt with a demure white top and heels. While she didn’t actually see Clint that day, she had it on good authority (from Natasha) that Clint spied on her from the air vents.

If she put an extra something in her walk, well, she was the only one who noticed...right?

 

(Thirsty) Thursday involved pitchers of purple variants of Long Islands. Darcy is a little hazy on what exactly happened, but she does remember sitting in Clint’s lap at some point.

That’s got to be a good thing, right?

 

Friday was a cocktail reception for some sort of Avengers-damages-related fundraiser. Natasha dragged a hungover Darcy out of bed before taking her to the spa. They talked about BBC TV shows and political regimes while their hair, nails, and makeup were done. (Natasha was surprisingly erudite about Downton Abbey. Apparently Happy had gotten her into it.) Natasha gave her a garment bag with an obvious wink, and Darcy snorted. How this nerd was a lethal, world-renowned spy, she had no idea.

The dress was grayish-purple, and had long sleeves and a daringly-low neckline. When Darcy put it on, it hugged every curve, making her waist look ridiculously tiny and her boobs? Yeah...definitely out there.

Clint choked on his champagne when he saw her.

 

On Saturday, Darcy just hung out in her room, doing laundry and playing video games. Around 8 that evening, a quiet knock sounded on her door. 

A nervous-looking Clint stood on the other side, rocking on his heels as he stuck his hands in his pockets. “Can I come in?”

Darcy opened the door wider, gesturing him into to her living room. He perched on the edge of her couch as Darcy fiddled with her console, putting games and controllers away.

“So, uh, where’s the purple today?” he finally asked in a fake-joking tone after squirming under Darcy’s curious gaze for several minutes.

Without a word, Darcy stripped off her shorts and t-shirt, revealing the matching lace bra and panty set she had on in the color of a ripe plum.

He didn’t ask any more questions after that.

 

(She wore bright purple stilettos on the first official date the next evening. They left such lovely little indentations on his ass as she wrapped her legs around him later.)


	7. love and hate (darcy&a new friend)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the third part in the Darcy/Bucky saga in chapters 1 and 4, I guess? And there will be at least another part.

**There was much to hate in this world, and too much to love.**

**Gregory McGuire, _Wicked_**

Darcy left the Tower in a haze. After everything that had happened with Bucky, she just wanted to not be there. She just wandered around aimlessly, losing herself in the seething mass of humanity that populated the streets of New York.

She hated this.

She hated that she hadn’t followed her own advice. She’d always told friends that you should set boundaries and terms before jumping into bed with someone. And what did she do? Jump into bed with Bucky without admitting that she had feelings for him.

She hated being second-best, a shitty consolation prize for someone who never wanted her in the first place. Clint had implied that Bucky and Natasha had some sort of past, but Darcy had always thought that it was firmly in the past.

She hated feeling powerless. She felt overwhelmed, living in Stark Tower. She was only Jane’s assistant due to the scientist pitching a bitch fit about it. She had no special training or skills, unless you counted making endless amounts of coffee on short notice as a skill. But with Bucky, for once in her life she felt like she was enough. 

And of course, it had to start raining as she was walking. Darcy ducked into a nearby coffee shop, bought a cup of coffee, and sat at a table in the back. She stared out the window at the downpour, lost in her thoughts, until another woman sat down across from her.

“I just wanted say that I love your beanie. Where did you get it?” The woman across from her was about her age, and had the most gorgeous sleeve of ink on her left arm.

Darcy patted her head, unaware that she was even wearing anything on it. She felt the point of the cat ears on the top of her beanie. “Oh, um, I made it,” she said, blushing. 

“No shit? That awesome!” the woman said. “I’m Vinny, by the way,” she added, holding out her hand, a jumble of bangles rattling on her wrist.

“Darcy,” she replied, shaking Vinny’s hand.

“So, Darcy, you look rather upset. Wanna talk about it?” Vinny asked bluntly.

“Do you always start conversations with total strangers?” Darcy asked.

“Yeah, why not? Every friend you make starts out as a stranger, ja feel? Plus, you have a bitchin’ personal style, and I dig that.”

A grin escaped from Darcy. “Ja feel. And thanks, you too” 

So Darcy poured out her heart to this utter stranger. “...and I just want to hate him, but I can’t,” she finished, staring into her coffee cup and sniffling.

“You know what I do when I want to be angry at everything?” Vinny asked after a moment. 

“What?”

“I break shit. Like, a lot of shit. And I make a list of everything I love in this world, like the way babies smell and G&Ts. There’s a lot of things to hate in life, but there are even more things that I love. And in the end, that's what keeps me going.”

“Those are oddly specific examples,” Darcy said with a quiet laugh. After a while, she added. “I love house music and crocheting.”

“Strip Jenga and cartwheels,” Vinny countered.

“Mad scientists and German cuss words.”

The two went back and forth for about ten minutes before Vinny stood and pulled Darcy up from the table. “C’mon, new friend, let’s go break shit,” she said with a mischievous grin.

Darcy shook her head as she followed Vinny out the door. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” 

Vinny just smiled enigmatically as she climbed on the back of a sleek motorcycle parked at the curb. “Probably,” she replied as she passed Darcy the spare helmet.

Darcy laughed, loud and boisterous, as she climbed onto the back. The roar of the motorcycle drowned out the ringing of Darcy’s phone in her bag.

 

_1 Missed Call from  
James Barnes_

_1 New Voicemail_


	8. real gods (darcy/steve)

**Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.**

**Zora Neale Hurston, _Their Eyes Were Watching God_ ******

It had been a long time since Badb had seen war like this - eons, actually. Since the old gods were no longer worshipped as they once were, she and her sisters had disbanded, each to seek their own pleasures in peacetime. They occasionally, through the millennia, would get together to witness certain turning points in history - never to interfere, only to watch.

(Of course, there was one memorable time when Badb interfered with that rule. There was a soldier, pure of heart and still familiar with the Old Ways, who had called upon her in a dream before rescuing his brothers in arms. Macha and Nemain had ignored his plea, but Badb had not. It had been...recently? Time moved so strangely in this realm, so she was not sure. She had appeared in her crow guise, leading him through the woods to his goal.)

 

The battle had been going for over 48 hours, and the team was exhausted. Whatever they were battling wasn’t entirely human, and even with the added bonus of Thor’s divinity, the Avengers were still lacking in enough manpower to beat them.

“Steve!” Darcy’s voice crackled into the comms. “Do you remember the crow in Italy?”

“How did you- nevermind, yes! What about her?” he replied. He had told her that story a few months ago after they had watched _Brave_ one date night.

“Call on her! She can help!”

He had to think before recalling the phrase his Ma had whispered about once. Haltingly, he spoke the fractured Gaelic. After a few moments, they heard Agent Coulson swear through the comm lines, and then a rumble shook the earth.

“Cap, what was that?” Clint asked as the Avengers retreated to a safe point behind a retaining wall to regroup. 

Steve was about to answer when the sound of wings flapping echoed through the area. “It’s something my ma used to tell me about, from the Old Country,” he replied absentmindedly as they all turned to watch the sky.

A woman garbed in burnished bronze armor landed in front of them, wings folding against her back as she stood. “I was summoned,” she intoned solemnly, eyes hidden behind her helm.

Steve stepped forward and bowed down on one knee, arm crossed over his chest and fist on his chest in the traditional warrior’s greeting they had all learned from Thor. The other members of the team followed suit, albeit a little confusedly.

“Who summoned me?” she queried, and the ground shook with the force of her voice.

Steve found his hands shaking subtly as he stood and stepped forward, so he gripped his shield tighter. “I did,” he replied solemnly.

“Ah, yes, I remember you. You were very tricky, getting into that camp. Like a crow-child,” she said in Gaelic, and Steve nodded slowly as he struggled to translate what she was saying in his head.

“Only because of your assistance,” he said politely in stumbling Gaelic.

Her full lips curved downward in a slight frown. “You forget our tongue, crow-child?”

“I have no one to practice with, Great Lady,” he said sadly, his Gaelic becoming smoother as he fell back into the rhythm of the language. This conversation was certainly taking a turn for the strange, and Steve had to figure out a way to get it back on course.

“That will change,” she said with a knowing smile. 

Before he could say more, the roar of the mutated whatever-they-were sounded from beyond the wall. “A boon of assistance, Great Lady?” he asked with a gesture behind him.

Her smile changed from knowing to vicious. “Of course, my crow-child. This will be fun, no?” She pulled two short swords from scabbards on her back and unfolded her wings. “Let us battle!” she cried out in English before taking off in flight.

 

The tide of the battle was turned after the winged woman’s appearance. Within a short amount of time, the creatures were killed. The winged woman landed gracefully and walked towards the team, wiping her blades off on her tunic before sheathing them. “Thank you for the battle, crow-child,” she said to Steve in Gaelic. “These tributes are a fitting sacrifice.”

“You are most welcome, Great Lady,” Steve said, kneeling to her.

She strode over to him and gently pulled him to his feet. “I only ask to see your face one last time,” she said quietly, gauntleted hands hovering by his face.

Maybe it was the adrenaline making him reckless, or maybe it was the familiar yet strange smile that graced her lips. But Steve knew that if he could just see her face, he would know who she was - who she really was. Something emboldened him, and he countered her request with, “Only if I can see yours.” 

Her wings unfolded, and she used them to hover at his eye level. In unison, they removed each other’s masks.

“Hello, crow-child,” Darcy said in Gaelic, with a gentle smile.

“Hello, love of my life,” he replied before kissing her. After a few moments, she furled her wings and he sat her down. "Does this mean you'd rather have sparring sessions than flowers?" he asked jokingly.

She pondered the question. "Does it have to be either/or?" she asked with a grin.


	9. history and myth

**I have noticed that whenever you have soldiers in the story, it is called history. Before their arrival it is called myth, folktale, legend, fairy tale, oral poetry, ethnography. After the soldiers arrive, it is called history.**

**Paula Gunn Allen**

Badb elected to fly back to the Tower, rather than ride in the Quinjet. It had been centuries since she had been unbound for a long period of time, and she planned to make the most of it before she was caught and bound again.

Under the cover of a cloudy night, she swooped in and landed on Stark’s penthouse floor. Everyone else was gathered there, cleaned up and eating the traditional post-battle takeout. She strode in, still clad in her battle armor, carrying the scent of blood and sweat and death with her.

“You know the rules, Lewis! No guts or gore on my carpet!” Tony called out around a mouthful of pizza.

 

It took some time, returning to her mortal form. Badb had to turn her battle-sharp focus inward, finding that part of her that was a (relatively) normal, twenty-something American woman and not a millennia-old Irish war goddess. But eventually she shifted, her wings becoming intricate tattoos on her shoulders and arms and the armor softening to a knit sweater and leggings.

Barefooted, Darcy padded silently over to the group, snagging a box of pizza before sitting on Steve’s lap.

“Um, excuse me, am I the only one wondering what the hell just happened?” Clint asked, raising his hand.

“No no no, Hawkguy, you’re not the only one. Explain, Lewis. Now,” Tony said in a tone normally reserved for the rare boardroom meetings he did make. 

In the back of her mind, Darcy could sense the fear all but rolling off him in waves. _This Stark does not like magic, does he not?_ the voice in the back of her head that was Badb asked with a vicious chuckle. Darcy bared her teeth at Tony in an approximation of a smile, and her eyes flashed red. “Mortal, do you really think I will cede to your demands?” she asked, her speech and cadence matching Thor’s in subtle formality.

Steve ran soothing hands across her shoulders and down her arms, tracing her tattoos as he often did when they were in bed together. Darcy relaxed, and the part of her that was Badb settled for pizza instead of blood. (The red eyes and slightly too-sharp teeth stayed, though.)

“I was once Badb, one of the Morrigna of lore. Until my _préachán leanbh_ released me, I was bound into my mortal form, which you know as Darcy Lewis,” she explained, with a fond look over her shoulder toward Steve.

Steve just smiled at the now-familiar term of endearment. “My Badb Catha,” he whispered in her ear before nuzzling her neck, and Darcy giggled.

“And for those of us who aren’t versed in...whatever that is?” Clint asked politely.

“The Morrigan are a trio of war goddesses in Irish belief. While sometimes portrayed as a single entity, most often they are described as sisters Ba-” Jane started to lecture.

“No names!” Darcy cut her off. At Jane’s confused look, Darcy explained, “You don’t want to draw that kind of attention from Them.” 

Jane nodded in understanding, and then continued. “They are similar to the Valkyrie in Norse myth, and are also seen as omens of death and doom if seen by a warrior before battle. Darcy’s aspect is closely associated with crows, hence her wings,” she concluded. “What? I know about things other than astrophysics,” she said defensively at the others' odd looks.

“You forgot that we often turn the tide of battle towards those in our favor if we appear in battle,” Darcy added.

“Which is why we won today,” Natasha noted pessimistically.

Darcy shrugged. “You would have won eventually. I just...sped things up a bit,” Darcy countered. “Oh! And I know some cool magic tricks,” Darcy said, letting flame dance in her palm before snuffing it out.

(Tony’s eyes got very round at that. Inside Darcy’s head, Badb chuckled some more. _Wait until he sees the shapeshifting._ )

“Steve, you seem very calm about all of this,” Bruce noted curiously.

“My Ma was from the Old Country. She was - what did you call it, _bean uasal_?” Steve asked Darcy in an aside.

“An initiate,” Darcy supplied. “Siofra - I mean, Sarah - worked among the bloodied of the battlefield known as life. Therefore, she became one of mine. And eventually, so did Steve. The women in her family have always upheld some of the old ways, and she passed a few useful phrases down to her Stiofan. ”

“I called upon her in a dream, apparently, back during the War,” Steve explained. “She helped me free Bucky and the rest of the men by leading me to them.”

“So let me get this straight. You are an entity out of Irish mythology, that Steve’s mother used to worship,” Stark summarized.

Steve sat Darcy on the couch before he jumped up angrily. “You got somethin’ to say about my Ma?” he asked Tony, looming over the other man on the opposite couch. (Ooh, Darcy loved it when her boy got all Brooklyn.) “She was a good Catholic woman, Stark.”

“And so was my mom!” Stark said, raising his hands defensively. Darcy leaned forward and grabbed Steve’s clenched fists. “Not now, crow-child,” she murmured in Gaelic. “You can spar with me later and get all that aggression out,” she promised, urging him back into his seat before curling up against his side.

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” he whispered in her ear with a sinful smile, his Gaelic still a little rusty. (They could work on that. Later. Much later.)

“I do not like that word, Stark,” Darcy said imperiously as some of Badb’s voice leaked into her tone.

“What word?”

“Myth,” Darcy spat out, as if the word tasted bitter on her tongue. “It implies that I am not real and only exist in stories told to children in the dark of the night.” 

Thor nodded his agreement. “Both Badb’s people and mine have existed in your Midgardian history, yet we are now relegated to children’s stories at best and bastardized, misinformed caricatures at worst,” he said eloquently.

“Your people,” Darcy said, motioning to Tony and his long-ago Roman background, “and their centurions erased our people from history, simply because we lost and they won. That does not make mine and Thor’s existence - or lack thereof - fact.”

Tony’s mouth opened and closed as he gaped like a fish. “I think that you have been told,” Pepper mock-whispered impishly in his ear. Natasha giggled girlishly at that, and the tension in the room was somewhat released.

“Coming, _préachán leanbh_?” Darcy asked as she stood, shooting Steve a wickedly promising smile over her shoulder.

Her gave her a darkly promising one in return as he linked his fingers with hers. “Only for you, _bean uasal_.”

“Lady Darcy?” Thor called out politely before they left. 

“Yes?” 

“I wish to spar with you tomorrow, if it would please the Great Lady. It shall be a welcome challenge to pit my skills against someone of an equal upbringing.”

Everyone’s interest piqued at that, and Darcy smiled enigmatically. “We would be honored to spar with Asgard’s most feared _felli fjörnets_ ,” she finally answered after some consideration.

His smile was blinding, and Darcy could see that the name she called him brought back some very old memories. “I shall be more prepared than the last time,” he promised with a rueful laugh.

“You may always call upon the Lady Sif for backup,” Darcy said magnanimously. “She was always better with a sword than you,” Darcy teased.

“Until tomorrow,” Thor said with a courtly bow.

“Until tomorrow,” Darcy replied with an elegant curtsey.

“Do I even wanna know?” Steve asked as he took her hand again.

“It’s a rather long story…”

“You can tell me after we spar,” Steve suggested with a wink before throwing her over his shoulder.

Her tricky little crow-child, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few translations:  
> \- préachán leanbh: "crow child" in Gaelic  
> \- bean uasal: "noble lady" in Gaelic (which is as close of a translation I could find for Great Lady)  
> \- felli fjörnets: literally "slayer of giants"; Old Norse kenning used to describe Thor
> 
> I seem to have developed a lot of headcanons about this verse, so feel free to come talk to me on Tumblr about them! My user name is the same there (notahotlibrarian).


	10. silly (darcy&jane)

**The great advantage of being thought silly, is that people forget and begin to think one might also be foolish.**

**Gail Carriger, _Blameless_**

“Miss Lewis, would you care to explain your actions from earlier?” Coulson asked blandly.

“They say actions speak louder than words,” Darcy mused while inspecting the sluggishly bleeding cut on her forearm.

“Still, I would like to have a word on the matter,” Coulson responded, quirking an eyebrow at her.

“Anthropomorphic. All yours, big guy,” Darcy shot back quickly.

“Miss Lewis!” snapped Director Fury as he strode into the holding room. “Answer the damn question!”

Behind Fury, the light on the video camera began to blink in a very specific pattern. A grin briefly passed over Darcy’s face when she saw it. She turned back to Coulson and rolled her eyes. “So needy! Okay, well, here’s how everything happened….”

 

_2 hours earlier…_

Darcy and Jane were busy jamming out to Tavares while working, and therefore unaware when the attack hit the Tower. Jane had dismantled JARVIS’s speaker earlier in the week for spare parts. Darcy, in turn, made all the maintenance requests for the speaker get conveniently lost in the mainframe.

(Yay, teamwork!)

It wasn’t until the glass shattered as a smoke bomb came flying through the lab were they aware that there was a problem, let along a siege.

“Jane!” Darcy yelled as she dove behind one of the machines.

“I’m okay!” she faintly heard Jane reply from over by the work benches.

“Enact plan Bravo Niner!” Darcy yelled after the smoke started to clear.

Once she heard the crash of the table and all the tools on it hit the ground, Darcy peeked around the machine she was behind.

Five men were in a v-shaped formation on the other side of the wall. Four were equipped with small-caliber handguns, but the fifth held an ominous looking syringe in his hand. _Kidnapping it is, then_ , Darcy thought to herself as she took off running for Jane’s overturned table. She vaulted over the edge before landing in a crouch next to Jane. Shots echoed over their heads, and they hunched down ever lower.

“You got the drive?” Darcy whispered to Jane. Jane nodded frantically as she lifted her shirt, revealing an external hard drive the size and shape of a flask tucked into the waistband of her jeans.

“On the count of three, Bravo Niner is a go. Wait for my signal to come out,” Darcy instructed.

Silently, Darcy and Jane counted to three on their fingers in unison. With a hefty throw from each of them, the glass jars that had been taped under the workbench went flying towards their assailants. 

Once they heard the sound of broken glass, Darcy popped up from behind the table, fists held in a ready position. Before anyone could fire any shots, one man started to scream as a jar hit him and hydrochloric acid started to eat at his skin. In a move the Black Widow would be proud of, Darcy used the edge of the table as a springboard and dove across the floor, Tazing the guy in the balls as she slid in between his legs.

One of the other men turned away from Jane’s hiding place and started to advance on Darcy. “Jane, now!” Darcy yelled as she took a running leap at the first man. As her feet landed solidly in his chest, Jane rose from behind the table and started to run towards the safe room. The other two attackers started to follow her. “Behind you!” Darcy yelled at Jane as she kicked the handgun out of the downed man’s reach.

In a move that was quicker than most people would expect out of her, Jane swerved as the first man dove for her waist. With a vicious push, Jane knocked over the metal shelving unit full of reference materials onto him once he fell.

Darcy grabbed her laptop off her desk as threw it at Jane’s second attacker, clipping him in the back of the knees. (Goodbye, MacBook; you will be missed.) Jane then struck him sharply in the throat with the hard drive. With a nod to Darcy, she dove into the safe room and sealed the door.

Darcy surveyed the room for the remaining attacker - the one with the syringe. She saw a flash of black fabric behind the generator. Padding silently across the lab, Darcy grabbed an extension cord from the floor. She knotted it loosely before tossing one end over a support beam in the ceiling. She then slid across the top of the generator, pinning their attacker to the generator with her legs. With one hand, she grabbed the syringe, and with the other she wound the noosed end of the extension cord around his neck. With a sharp tug on the opposite end of the cord, he was hoisted into the air, legs kicking as he tried to reach the pistol strapped to his thigh. Darcy quickly relieved him of that and then slumped on the generator, suddenly exhausted.

A faint knocking sound pulled her out of her daze. Jane was pounding against the safe room wall and pointing to the man under the bookcase, who was struggling to disentangle himself and stand up.

Sighing, Darcy grabbed the syringe. “Time to go night night,” she murmured sweetly as she stalked towards him. One vicious jab to his upper arm later, he was down.

Darcy ruthlessly stripped the unconscious bodies of weapons and searched their pockets. Not finding anything useful, she gathered the weapons and retreated to the safe room with Jane.

Jane was inspecting a dent in the hard drive when Darcy sat down beside her. “I always told you those textbooks could put someone to sleep,” Darcy said with a smirk.

Jane just rolled her eyes at Darcy’s pun.

 

_Now..._

“...and then the Avengers and company busted in, in all their spandexed glory, and then you guys showed up, and yeah….that’s about it,” Darcy finished cheerfully.

“Those are some rather unusual skills for someone so- so…” Coulson stumbled over his words, waving a hand in her general direction.

“So what?” Darcy asked blithely, twirling her hair around one finger.

“What Agent Coulson wants to know is how a college dropout who revels in hacking into the SHIELD mainframe and changing the elevator music to disco can be so skilled in combat,” Director Fury explained bluntly.

“Google?” Darcy replied innocently. She giggled at the incredulous look Fury gave her before standing. “Just because I’m silly doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” she said as if stating the obvious. “Now if you will excuse me, I have a phone call I’m expecting.” She gave them a girlish little wave before exiting the room.

 

In Tony’s lab, all of the Avengers (and Jane) were huddled around two holo-screens, one playing the attack in Jane’s lab and the other a live feed from Darcy’s interrogation room. When Darcy walked out on Fury and Coulson, Tony clapped and whistled while Clint silently passed Natasha a twenty. Jane just smiled and slipped away from the group. She, too, had a phone call she was expecting.

 

Back in Jane’s now-demolished lab, Darcy dragged the desk phone down to the floor, where she was comfortably sprawled against the overturned workbench. Jane grabbed two water bottles out of the mini fridge before joining her on the floor.

At precisely 10:00 am, the phone rang. Darcy leaned forward and put it on speaker.

“Hello angels!” a cultured male voice called out from the phone.

“Hello Charlie!” Darcy and Jane replied cheerfully in unison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points if you catch the Veronica Mars reference!


	11. books (darcy/bucky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired by all the posts I've seen floating around Tumblr about all-around good student James Barnes.

**Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.**

**Lemony Snicket**

The first time Bucky actually talked to Darcy, she was hiding in a coatroom at the Met. They had met the week before at the Tower - she was curled up in a corner of Stark’s lab, taking notes from a textbook, while Bucky was getting his arm worked on. Now curled up in a corner behind some fur coats, she was biting down on her pointer finger while intently reading a book. He coughed quietly to get her attention.

She looked up, startled, before marking her page with a finger. “Is there a reason you’re hiding in here?” he asked, curious.

“Some men think ‘no’ means yes and ‘get lost’ means take me, I’m yours,” she responded flippantly.

He tensed up. “Show me who it is and I’ll give him a vocabulary lesson.” 

The smile she gave him was brilliant. “Ooh, do you know the meaning of defenestrate?” she asked excitedly.

“To throw something, especially out a window,” Bucky responded with a smirk.

“Damn. I bet you killed it on the vocab portion of the SAT….or maybe not,” she added at his confused look.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve always liked to read. My ma used to say I knew more five dollar words than a boy should,” he explained as he settled on the floor next to her.

She folded down the corner on the page she was on and stuck the book back in her evening bag. “Darcy, confessed bookworm” she said, sticking her hand out.

He shook it, responding with “James, closet bookworm.”

She leaned in as if telling him a secret. “You know, I’ve learned that the best people in life are the ones who read. Voraciously. I can tell you’re good people.”

He warmed a little at that. “Oh yeah?” he responded, cocking an eyebrow at her. “And where did you learn that?”

Darcy pulled her book back out of her bag and handed it to him. “From a book, where else?” she said as if it were obvious.

He studied the slim volume in his hands, entitled _Horseradish_ and by someone called Lemony Snicket. (What the hell kind of name was that?) He made a movement to pass it back to her, but she waved her hands at him before standing.

“No, no. You read it. You might learn something useful after all,” she said with a wink.

He stood as well, noting that even with her heels on, he still had a few inches in height over her - and my, what a lovely view that gave him. “But how will I return it to you?” he asked, piling on that notorious charm that had gotten him out of so much trouble (and into so many beds).

She gave him a knowing grin over her shoulder as she walked away. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” she said mysteriously. 

He took a moment to admire her curves as she walked away before tucking the book into the breast pocket of his jacket.

 

Even though he was bone tired when he got back to the Tower (only getting a hour-long catnap while flying back to New York after a mission, then being expected to schmooze at a party will do that to you), he read the first few pages from the book Darcy had loaned him. A few pages quickly turned into the whole thing. He closed the book gently, noting the initials on inside of the back cover, and set it on his nightstand before going to sleep.

The next morning, the slim volume was gone. It had been replaced by another slim book, this one slightly larger than the previous, called The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. (Bucky vaguely remembered seeing the movie with Steve a lifetime ago.) There was no note or card with the book, but the same set of initials were inscribed on the back.

So Bucky read it. The banter was witty, the plot twists were sharp, and it was not an unpleasant way to spend the afternoon.

He saw Darcy briefly around the Tower as she got coffee and ran other errands for the scientists. Every time, she’d give him a smile and ask him how he liked whatever she had last left for him. And every time, she’d have to go before he could ask her out to coffee or dinner or something where they could actually sit down and talk about more than books.

It continued like that for almost two weeks. Every night he was in the Tower, he’d leave a book on his nightstand. Every morning, it would be replaced with a new one. He read Shakespeare, courtroom dramas, historical accounts of the American frontier, biographies of classic film stars, graphic novels, and one rather silly paperback romance novel that he enjoyed more than he was comfortable admitting. 

Over the course of his reading, he discovered he was learning as much about Darcy as he was about the various subjects covered in the books. Every book had dog-eared pages and highlighted lines and notes in the margins. He discovered that she loved dirty jokes (all the ones in Shakespeare’s plays were highlighted and starred), thought Pepper was the Della Street to Tony’s Perry Mason, had very strong views about the treatment of minority groups in American history, wanted to learn how to Charleston, loved the name Thessaly, and that she saw herself as a wallflower (whatever that meant).

Two weeks after the party, he woke up to an empty nightstand - no well-worn copy of some novel waited for him. Instead, there was a Post-It note with an address and a time for that afternoon.

At promptly 1:00 pm, he was standing outside the Strand Bookstore. A smiling Darcy walked up, holding two large tote bags. “Welcome to my slice of heaven,” she said, passing him a bag.

“What is this for?” Bucky asked as he took the bag.

“Do you really think you can walk in here and not purchase enough books to fill that up?” she replied, giving him a look over the top of her glasses.

A chuckle escaped his lips. “Fair point.”

They wandered the shelves for almost two hours, losing each other and then finding each other again. Around three, they met back up at the entrance, each holding a full bag of books.

“So, coffee?” Darcy asked brightly, lightly bumping his bag with hers. “I know a great place right around the corner from here.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at her. “Is this your idea of a date?” he asked suspiciously. 

Darcy shrugged innocently, but her cheeks turned a tell-tale shade of pink. “Maybe,” she said cagily. “If you don’t have shitty taste in books,” she added after a moment’s thought.

“I have shitty taste in books?” he said with a laugh. “What about that romance novel you left for me?” he asked her teasingly.

“Hey now, that is one of my favorite books and Colin Bridgerton is super dreamy,” she said, pointing a finger at him. They argued about books all the way to the coffee shop, and Darcy didn’t even notice that he had slipped her bag of books from her shoulder and was carrying it. And that he paid for the coffee. 

They compared books at the table, while talking about a little of everything. (Apparently, Darcy was some sort of...professional student? She said her dad gave her a healthy trust fund that she used to just keep getting more and more ‘useless’ degrees, as he called them. She already had five and was working on her sixth in American Studies. Bucky had to admit, it was kind of cute how excited she was about some of her fall classes - she practically bounced in her seat as she talked about “Chinatown and the American Imagination” and “The Geopolitics of Beauty.”)

They shared a cab back to the Tower, and surprisingly, Stark was waiting on them - or rather, her - at the lobby.

“What, no tote bag of books?” he asked her teasingly as Bucky trailed behind her, still carrying the bags. “My credit card is so thankful!”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Whatever, Dad. Act like that and I won’t give you the book I found for you.”

Bucky’s head whipped back and forth between them. Dad?


	12. libraries (darcy/steve)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually wrote this a while back and started plotting out a bigger story, but it never went anywhere. It's currently titled "you'd be surprised what you can learn at the library" and is a crossover with TNT's The Librarian movie series. Then I found this quote and...well, here's what I've got so far.

**Libraries were full of ideas - perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.**

**Sarah J. Maas, _Throne of Glass_**

"Well, well, well, if it isn’t the naughty librarian herself,” Jane drunkenly crowed as a brunette clad in a stereotypical cardigan-and-glasses combo weaved through the crowded bar to join them at the booth in the back corner. Steve watched as Tony and Clint both gave the woman head to toe looks.

“Wow, Jane, thanks for the heads up that you were bringing an _entire team of superheroes_ to our girls’ night,” the woman responded dryly.

“Whatever. Thor is the one who set this all up. He said I should reconnect with old friends. I was busy experimenting with different parameters for my quantum field generator tonight but nooo, he insisted,” Jane slurred as she jabbed the Norse god in discussion in the shoulder.

The other woman pushed her glasses down and pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, tell me how you really feel, Jane. Missed you too,” Steve heard her mutter under her breath. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “Hello, everyone, I’m Darcy,” she said, giving a short wave. “I once Tased Thor and I desperately need a drink.”

Before Steve could offer to get her one, the waitress appeared and took her order. Since Jane was firmly ensconced between Dr. Banner and Thor in the middle of the booth, the only place left to sit was on the ends, either by him or by Tony on the other end. With a polite smile, she gingerly sat down beside him.

“Hello, I’m Steve,” he said, shaking her hand. “So, I guess you work at a library?” he asked with a slight laugh.

“Yeah, after I finished my internship with Jane I went on to get my Master’s in Library Science. I originally thought I would be a law librarian, in keeping with my political science degree, but I found that I just love working with the public sphere a lot more than I thought I did.”

“I always enjoyed going to the library when I was younger,” he mused. 

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You don’t look like the bookworm type.”

He cocked an eyebrow back. “You know what they say - don’t judge a book by its cover.”

She snorted. “A book pun. To a librarian. How original," she said dryly.

There was a lull in the conversation as the waitress sat Darcy’s drink down. As soon as she had left, Steve picked the conversation back up. “I was sick a lot as a kid. Had asthma, couldn’t play outside like everyone else. So I spent a lot of time in the library, reading about other people’s adventures. There was always something new to find there.”

“A place of endless wonder,” she murmured, and he nodded in agreement. “And now you live the kind of life you once read about.”

“Well, I am definitely not searching for King Solomon’s mines, so…”

“Allan Quartermain, huh? Then I have a graphic novel series for you. What else do you enjoy reading?”

“Well, I’ve been playing catch-up with what is considered the great literature of the last century.”

Darcy blew a raspberry into her hands. “Boring. ‘Great’ literature and literature that you think is great are two totally different categories, though they may overlap.” Fishing a pen out of her purse, she started to write a list on a bar napkin. After a few minutes of frantic scribbling, she passed it to him. “My number is on the other side, in case you can’t make out my shitty handwriting,” she said with a shy smile.

“Hey. You. Naughty librarian talking to Rogers,” Tony said from across the table, snapping his fingers at Darcy and effectively ruining any witty reply Steve may have had. “Do librarians still even exist? Isn’t everything we need to know on the Internet? What do you even do all day, shush people and check Facebook?”

Darcy stood, resting her palms on the table as she leaned over to talk to Tony. “First off, Mr. Stark,” she said, disdain dripping off her voice, “do I look like a dog to you? Do not ever snap your fingers at me again, or I will break them off and feed them to you.”

Steve watched amusedly as the whole table silenced and tuned in to Tony’s dressing down. (Natasha looked especially excited at the promise of bodily harm to everyone’s favorite billionaire.)

“Secondly,” Darcy continued, “I don’t know what bullshit Jane has told you about me, but I do not spend my day jacking around on Facebook, though I did write my thesis on the use of social media for campaigning in politics. I worked hard for Jane, and I work extremely hard at my current job, which involves protecting information that the government you indirectly work for would like to censor and/or hide from those who have the right to know. Which would be everybody, not just insensitive jackass billionaires with daddy issues.”

Even Steve knew that boundaries had been crossed with Darcy’s last statement. “And, thirdly,” she barreled on, only to throw her drink in his face. 

Before Steve could recover from his shock, she had grabbed her purse and disappeared into the night. 

Well, he did always have a thing for spitfire brunettes with curves for days. Good thing he had her number.

 

Darcy slowly pounded her head against the reference desk. She couldn’t believe that a) she’d been gullible enough to fall for Jane’s shitty overtures at friendship again, b) threw a drink at Tony motherfuckin’ Stark, and c) gave her number to Captain ~~Tightpants~~ America, if her estimations were correct.

“Problem, Darcy?” asked a woman’s dry voice.

“No, Charlene,” came Darcy’s muffled reply from under her hair.

“Good. Because if you put a dent in that desk, I will dock your pay. It’s Baroque.” Darcy heard the muffled tap of Charlene’s heels as she walked away.

A few minutes later, there was a polite cough. “Darcy?” When she looked up, a slightly disheveled older man with glasses and a kind smile stood in front of her.

“Uncle Flynn, your shirt is button crooked again,” she stated, pushing hair out of her face.

“So it is,” he replied, setting a stack of files on her desk before fixing his wardrobe malfunction. “And don’t worry, the desk is only a reproduction of Baroque.”

“And if it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it,” Darcy said, giggling at her own joke. (Poor Flynn missed most of the pop culture references she made.)

“Anyway,” he drawled, “here is the item Judson would like you to retrieve. I believe it is stored in a place you are already familiar with.” Darcy gave him a sloppy salute and he shook his head at her before ambling away.

She was about to peruse the file when another polite cough interrupted her. “Darcy? I was wondering if you’d help me find some of the books on your list.”

Darcy tucked the file in her messenger bag before standing. “Hi, Steve,” she said awkwardly, a blush rising to her cheeks. “I, uh, actually, pulled them all this morning,” she continued as her blush deepened, turning to grab a stack of novels from the shelves behind her. “Got your library card?”

He held up a battered paper card that looks as if it was from the 1940s. “Managed to hang on to it,” he replied with a smirk.

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Let’s update you, then.” As she found his information in the computer and made him a new card, she could feel him watching her and she fought the urge to blush again.

She processed his checkout and handed the stack of books to him. “Let me know what you think!” she said with an overly cheery smile.

He laughed. “I sure will,” he said, eyes hinting at something more than just a conversation about books.

As he walked away, Darcy sighed and enjoyed the view.

“Who was that?” Judson asked from behind her left shoulder.

“Steve Rogers,” Darcy replied dreamily.

“He certainly grew up from the last time I saw him.” Judson said after a moment. Darcy gave him an odd look, and he shrugged. “Have you looked at that file yet?”

“Not yet. I got...distracted.”

“Well, best get started then,” Judson said before disappearing.


	13. feed you (darcy/bucky)

**In a true oral folk tale, no one actually ever says I love you...Instead, they give them food. To feed someone is to express that very basic love.**

You know you’ve made it into Darcy’s inner circle when she cooks for you.

Growing up, she learned to cook traditional Italian dishes from her _nonni_ on one side and traditional Jewish dishes from her _bubbe_ on the other side. Holiday meals involved tables practically groaning under the weight of the food on them. Friends and strangers were often invited to meals with the Lewis clan, much to their delight and surprise, and they were always sent home with leftovers. 

In New Mexico, she made _ärtsoppa_ and _pannkakor_ the first Thursday of every month for Dr. Selvig so he could have a little taste of home. When she needed to distract Jane from her research, she made challah bread from a recipe passed down by generations of women in her own family - the smell alone was guaranteed to drag Jane from the lab. When one of the SHIELD agents that kept an eye on them (the funny one with the nice arms who drank coffee straight from the pot) came down with the flu, she made him chicken noodle soup with thick, handmade egg noodles and fresh celery and carrots. 

Darcy followed Jane to London and learned to make bangers and mash and blueberry scones from Jane’s mom. Ian taught her to make chicken tikka masala and how to find the best naan. (She never could get the hang of making kippers, but that was okay because she never did like them anyway.)

Then Thor returned to Earth for good, and he taught her how to season and cook all sorts of game birds, and Darcy had to buy another blank cookbook to add in all the new recipes she had learned.

 

In New York, Darcy suddenly had access to all the ethnic grocery stores and farmer’s markets she could ever hope for. Every Saturday, Jane gave her the morning off to scour for ingredients on the condition that she cook dinner for her and Thor that night. Darcy gleefully agreed.

But in the way that any meal cooked by a Lewis woman often goes, strays started to show up at the table. First it was the one agent in Puente Antiguo she had made soup for - his name was Clint and he still drank the coffee straight out of the pot - and he brought a lethally beautiful woman named Natasha. Clint eventually taught her to make funnel cakes and Natasha taught her to make _borscht_ and _pelmeni_ and where to find the best imported vodka in the city. Darcy, in turn, used the vodka to make _penne alla vodka_ , which scandalized Natasha to no end - that is, until she tasted it.

And then Jane dragged in Dr. Banner on the nights that Darcy made curry, and she learned to always have a vegetarian option available when she cooked. He introduced her to a variety of new spices and teas, and became her capable sous chef whenever she cooked Indian food. 

Where Bruce goes, Tony eventually follows. Darcy leaned to make all sorts of appetizers to tempt him into eating solid food instead of drinking his meals - she made bruschetta and crostini and all other sorts of nibbles to tempt him into staying for dinner. She eventually added a whole tab for drunken desserts to her cookbook, with mojito cupcakes or bread pudding or other boozy confections appearing in the fridge in Tony’s lab on a weekly basis.

Once Tony goes somewhere, it doesn’t take long for Pepper to show up as well. She and Darcy bonded over exotic fruits and quiche. Eventually, Pepper started to bring back fresh produce for Darcy whenever she traveled abroad, and Darcy always had a quiche with spinach, bacon and mushrooms waiting for Pepper whenever she returned.

Natasha dragged in a reluctant Steve to the dinners, and Darcy found herself doubling her already large recipes to keep up with his metabolism. He, too, could be drawn in by the smell of her challah bread, and more than once Darcy had to break up a fight between him and Jane for the first piece. He started to scour used bookstores for World War II-era cookbooks, and the two of them started a victory garden up on the roof of the building. (The mint made for great mojitos in the summer.)

Eventually, Steve dragged in a (very) reluctant stray of his own in the form of a newly un-brainwashed James ‘Bucky’ Barnes. While everyone else praised her cooking, James just sat at the end of the table, looking grumpy while he methodically cleaned his plate. Darcy tried everything from egg creams to her mom’s super top-secret meatloaf recipe to draw him out of his shell, but to no avail. She tried every global cuisine she could think of, from _peri-peri_ to _sopapillas_ to _pho_ in hopes that something would garnish even the faintest praise from him. She made simple dishes and fancy dishes and recipes that were centuries old, passed down through generations of family to her. Nothing got a reaction - he just ate what was put in front of him, put his dish in the dishwasher, and left.

Darcy knew exactly which food would fix any of the team’s bad moods. For Jane, it challah, fresh out of the oven, dusted with poppy seeds. For Thor, it was jalapeno-stuffed quail. For Clint, it was that very same chicken noodle soup she had made when he had the flu. For Natasha, it was her now-renowned _penne alla vodka_. For Tony, it was butter pecan cupcakes with whiskey buttercream. For Bruce, it was garlic knots, smothered with butter. For Steve, she made bangers and mash, just like Jane’s mom had taught her.

But for James? Nothing made him smile.

 

Almost everyone was out of the Tower when Darcy decided to make one of her dad’s old campfire favorites. (She was homesick for her family, but between her online grad school classes and helping out in Jane’s lab, she just didn’t have time to go home.) She threw potatoes, peppers, onions, link sausage, a pat of butter, and a couple of different seasonings into a cooler. Grabbing a roll of foil, her favorite cutting knife, and a box of plastic utensils, she had Dummy help her carry everything up to the roof.

It took a few tries, but Darcy eventually got a steady fire going in the fire pit. As the flames danced, she used the top of the cooler as a cutting board and sliced her ingredients. She made a foil packet, and threw everything in it, along with some salt and pepper and a healthy scoop of butter. After burying her packet in the coals, she leaned back in one of the rickety lawn chairs and dug a beer out of the cooler everyone kept stocked up there.

She was on her second beer, staring into the flames, when a shadow detached itself from the wall and sat itself down in one of the lawn chairs beside her.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Barnes, give a girl a little warning!” she squeaked, once she noticed the man sitting next to her. He just gave her a bland look and pulled a beer out of the cooler.

“So what are you making tonight?” he asked after a few minutes of awkward silence.

“Hobo dinners,” she replied absentmindedly as she poked at the coals, rearranging them closer to her foil packet. She heard him snort from behind his bottle of beer, and turned to give him a look. “What? My dad used to make them when we went camping. We’d roast s’mores while we waited for them to cook. It’s the only time I can remember my mom letting us eat dessert first,” she said, lips tilting up in a soft smile at the memory.

“No s’mores tonight?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow at her.

She turned her beer bottle until the label faced him, a smiling woman on the front with the words ‘chocolate stout’ underneath her. He snorted and shook his head, muttering something about ‘fancy-ass beers’ under his breath.

Darcy checked her watch, and saw that it was time to pull her dinner out of the coals. Grabbing the tongs, she gingerly pulled the foil packet out of the fire pit and dropped it on the closed cooler between them. “Want some?” she asked, holding the box of plastic forks out to Barnes.

He warily took a fork from her. Darcy then tried to open the packet, but the foil was still too hot. “Dammit!” she swore before putting her singed fingers in her mouth.

He gave her a look that she couldn’t decipher in the shadows before leaning forward and opening the packet with his metal hand. Darcy, ignoring his look, ravenously dug into her cobbled-together meal.

After a moment, Barnes took a bite as well. Darcy swallowed nervously and watched him for a reaction - any reaction, really.

A smile crossed his face, and he instantly looked decades younger. Darcy could only gape and watch him as he eagerly shoveled more into his mouth. “This is really good,” he mumbled around a mouthful of potatoes.

“Thanks,” she said shyly, before returning to her own portion. 

(In the dark, you couldn’t tell if she was flushed from the fire or blushing from the compliment.)


	14. take it off (darcy/bucky)

**A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you.**

**Francoise Sagan**

“So, how long have you had a crush on Barnes?” Natasha asked, sidling up next to Darcy at the bar.

“Forever,” Darcy sighed as she watched the man in question stretch out over the pool table as he lined up his shot. “Shit,” Darcy swore once she realized what she’d said. “Is it that obvious?”

Natasha snorted into her drink. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

Darcy held her own drink to her face, trying to cool down her flushing cheeks. “What do I do?” she whined to the older woman.

A mischievous grin crossed the older woman’s face. “Come with me. You need a better dress,” she said as she grabbed Darcy’s wrist and towed her to the bathroom.

 

Darcy was unceremoniously shoved into the single-stall bathroom, and Natasha sedately followed her in, locking the door behind them. “Strip,” she ordered the younger woman as she started to pull things from her handbag.

“Why?” Darcy grumbled as she gingerly toed off her flats. Natasha flung something black and silky at Darcy, and the zipper on it hit Darcy in the chin. “Shit, woman, do you always carry a fuck me dress in your purse?” Darcy asked as she tried to shimmy out of her jeans without putting her bare feet on the bathroom floor.

“With matching hooker heels,” Natasha said cheerfully, holding up a sinful looking pair of Louboutins, their soles redder than Darcy’s lipstick.

“You are so weird,” Darcy muttered, tossing her own oversized purse onto the counter. Natasha dug around in it until she found some bobby pins and Darcy’s red lipstick. As Darcy wiggled into the dress, Natasha touched up her own makeup in the mirror and adjusted the neckline of her shirt. 

Darcy tried to tug the top of the zipper up, and with a huff, Natasha turned her around and pulled it up. In a flurry of movement, Natasha pinned back the top half of Darcy’s hair and touched up her lipstick. “What do you say we go con those Brooklyn boys out of their money?”

Darcy smiled, quick and sharp, as she stepped into Natasha’s heels. “Sounds like taking candy from a geriatric senior.”

 

The guys Bucky and Steve had been playing sure were sore losers, and they huffed off to the bar to drown their sorrows in a pint of beer as Bucky counted their winnings. “Is it just me, or do these modern fellas just seem to be gettin’ dumber and dumber?” he asked Steve.

“I think people are catchin’ on to your hustle,” Steve responded dryly.

The click of high heels on hardwood interrupted whatever smart-assed statement Bucky would’ve made next. In unison, the two men looked up as Natasha stalked over to the pool table and slapped a hundred dollar bill on the table. “I’ll take you on,” she said defiantly.

“Gonna need a partner, sweetheart,” Bucky said, smirking at her.

A second set of high heels clicked across the hardwood. “I’ll back her up,” Darcy said confidently, as she slid a hundred dollar bill out of her bra and set it on the table.

Bucky just stared. And kept staring at Darcy. Steve shook his head and clapped Bucky on the back. Bucky snapped out of his daze. “You even know how to play pool, doll?” he asked Darcy as his gaze raked over her form, poured into some sort of sinfully-tight dress.

She gave him a blank look. “Well, no…” she said as she wiggled in between him and Steve. “But if you two play, it must be super hard,” she said, widening her eyes as she ran a hand down each man’s chest. With a wink, she weaved between them and studied the pool cues, trying to find the perfect one.

A bright gold zipper stuck out against the black fabric of the dress. Bucky’s gaze followed it from the hem of the dress, right above the back of Darcy’s knees, up to where the zipper pull hung temptingly between her shoulder blades. It winked in the neon light of the bar, tempting Bucky to pull it down. Trying to pull his tongue back into his mouth, he turned back to the pool table and tried to ignore the magnetic pull Darcy seemed to exert over him.

 

Depending on which side of the table you were playing on, the game was either a rousing success or an unmitigated disaster. Bucky was so distracted by that damn zipper that he missed almost every shot he took. Steve was too busy laughing at Bucky’s gobsmacked look that he missed about half of his shots. Natasha didn’t even try to play; she just watched Bucky watch Darcy.

And Darcy? She cleaned up the table. In one turn, she sunk every shot she took until the only balls left on the table had stripes on them. “I thought you were supposed to be good at this,” she smirked to Barnes as she sat on the edge of the table and counted the money.

Quietly, Natasha pulled Steve away from the pool table as Bucky leaned in and placed his hands on either side of Darcy’s legs. “I am good at this,” he said, boxing Darcy in on the table.

Darcy smiled sultrily as she crossed her legs, running the toe of her heel against the inside of Bucky’s thigh. “Didn’t seem like it,” she teased as she tucked the money back into her bra.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, ducking his head nervously.

Darcy hopped down off the pool table and landed dangerously close to Bucky. “That depends,” she said coyly, toying with the buttons on his shirt.

“On what?” he breathed.

“On whether or not you have any money left after getting your assed kicked in pool,” she replied, grinning.

He pretended to feel for his wallet. “You know, I seem to have lost all my money to this doll in a killer dress. But I do have a bottle of vodka in my freezer, if you’re interested?”

“Killer dress, huh?” Darcy asked as she grabbed her purse and jacket off a nearby barstool.

Bucky’s metal hand tapped an erratic beat against the zipper in small of Darcy’s back. “Looks good on you,” he said, giving her a head to toe look.

Darcy leaned in close and whispered in his ear. “It’ll look better on your floor.”


	15. fluid (darcy&vinny)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 4 of the angsty Darcy/Bucky saga
> 
> Part 1: bad boys and secrets (ch 1)  
> Part 2: tobacco tin (ch 4)  
> Part 3: love and hate (ch 7)

**Love is fluid, and once in a while it leaks out before you can stop it and runs away.**

**Cornell Woolrich, _Rendezvous in Black_**

Darcy was on the phone with Vinny when Bucky, Steve, Sam and Natasha returned from some top-secret mission. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw them exit the elevators and go into Bruce’s lab.

“He’s back!” she hissed into her phone, cutting Vinny off from whatever work story she was telling.

“I swear to God, Dee, if you so much as think about blasting Lana Del Rey while you hide in your room, I will be forced to shoot you. I did not pimp out all my lowlife contacts for these tickets just so you can stand me up.”

“Wait, tickets? What?” Darcy asked, focusing back on her phone conversation

“Lights All Night? Remember?”

Darcy held the phone away from her ear and gaped at it. Incoherent squealing escaped her lips as she started to bounce up and down. She gave a few fist pumps before attempting to regain her composure. “Seriously?! Lights All Night?! Like, is this legit? Or is it a work thing again?”

“Can’t it be both?” Vinny asked cagily.

Darcy snorted. “Last time it was both, I ended up flashing a bouncer so you could bag your perp, and, incidentally, started a fistfight between him and some rapper.”

Tony’s head appeared from behind one of Jane’s machines. “Catfight?” he yelled to Darcy. She flipped him the bird and turned her back to him.

“Good times,” Vinny said fondly. “Sorry, babe, but it’s a little bit of a work thing. I’m doing a favor for homicide and tracking down one of my regular busts so they can ask him some questions.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “So what do I have to do?”

“Lure him in for me?” Vinny pleaded.

Darcy sighed dramatically. “Is this going to be another one of those threesome plans again?”

“The hommy cops are super cute,” Vinny tried to offer as a bribe.

“Fine. But you’re buying breakfast.” With a smile, Darcy hung up. The icon for a new voicemail still flashed temptingly in the corner of her screen - as it had been for the last few weeks - and Darcy stuck her tongue out at it before sliding her phone back in her pocket.

“So…” Tony said from where he was leaning against Jane’s machine, trying to pretend he wasn’t shamelessly eavesdropping on Darcy’s conversation. “Lights all night? Flashing people? Catfights? Threesomes? Tell me, Lewis, what have you been up to?”

Darcy could see the faint reflection of metal in the glass behind Tony, and the bright red of Natasha’s hair. Giving him a sultry grin, she just said, “Hanging out with Vinny.”

“And who is Vinny?”

“A friend,” Darcy said, in a tone that implied so much more. “Love to stay and feed your perverted fantasies, but I’ve got to go find my body paint,” Darcy said airily as the lab doors opened and the returning team walked in. “Enjoy the quality time with your hand!” she called out to Tony, blowing him air kisses as she weaved around the weary men (and woman) in the doorway.

(She completely missed the murderous look Bucky gave Tony, and the way Bucky followed her movements until she reached the elevator bank.)

 

“What the fuck was that about?” Bucky growled, looming over Stark. 

Stark arched an eyebrow at him. “Jealous, much?” he asked with a shit-eating grin.

Only Natasha’s hand on Bucky’s arm stopped him from throttling the older man. “I’m guessing Vinny came through with the tickets?” Natasha asked Stark.

“You know Vinny?” Wait, of course you do. Yeah, I guess so,” Stark said as he started to tinker with the machine again. “Wait, tickets to what?”

Natasha just smiled at him. “You’re too old for it,” she said, straight-faced, before pulling the three men out of the lab and up to her room. 

(“Showers, now. Then jeans, white t-shirts, comfy shoes,” she told them authoritatively.)

 

Darcy loved going to house shows. She could lose herself in the beat of the music until she couldn’t tell where the bass stopped and her heartbeat began. Her normal, uncoordinated, and awkward self became something fluid and graceful as she weaved along with whatever track the DJ was spinning.

It wasn’t heaven, not by a long shot, but it was a pleasant distraction from that nagging icon in the corner of her phone and the way her heart had leapt into her throat at the first glimpse of James Buchanan Barnes. 

She laced up her knee-high Chucks, put on her bright pink wig and neon blue tutu, covered her arms with body paint, added a white crop top and was prepared to dance until the sun rose and the business people started their boring-ass commute. She wanted to dance until she forget all about Bucky and Natasha and everything else that was going wrong with her life.

Vinny picked her up at 11:30 on the dot, and the cop masquerading as a driver dropped them off in front of a nondescript warehouse half an hour later. Even in the car, you could feel the bass pounding through the cement, and Darcy smiled.

“Here’s our perp,” Vinny said, showing Darcy a picture of an average looking guy on her phone.

Darcy pursed her lips. “Just point him out when it’s time. I’ll be too busy dancing to be looking for him.”

Vinny just shook her head at Darcy before sliding out of the car. “Ready, babe?” she asked, holding her hand out to Darcy.

Darcy took her hand and slid out of the car as well. “You have no idea.”

(Darcy also missed the familiar car and driver behind them, dropping off four more revelers for the night’s festivities. Well, three more revelers and one guy who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.)

 

Of course the first song they heard in the warehouse was a remix of a Lana Del Rey song. Vinny groaned and rolled her eyes, but Darcy tensed. _And I don’t know how you get over, get over, someone as dangerous, tainted and flawed as you…_ The very same lyrics that Darcy had spent a week moping to were blasting through the speakers over a heady and slow beat.

What else could she do but dance? Snagging the first attractive stranger she could see, she writhed against him, moving her hips in a figure eight as she lifted her hands in the air. He moved some of the glowstick bracelets from his wrists to hers, sliding his hands down her arms before resting them on her shoulder blades.

Darcy smiled at him, but it didn’t reach her eyes. He wasn’t tall enough. His hair was blond, not brown. And neither of his arms reflected the pulsating lights overhead.

But someone’s arm behind him did. 

Startled, Darcy left her dance partner to turn around and grab Vinny. She leaned in and shouted in the other woman’s ear, “I swear I just saw him here,” pointing in the general direction of where she had seen the flash.

Vinny shook her head at Darcy, not needing to even ask who ‘him’ was. “You need a drink,” she said, grabbing Darcy’s wrist and tugging her towards the bar. “You need lots of them.”

The two women took several shots in glasses shaped like test tubes, and Darcy started to worry less about the metallic flash. As the music and liquor poured through her, she loosened up and just moved.

(Vinny made eye contact with Natasha, who was a few feet away in a green wig and a fishnet dress, and shook her head. Darcy didn’t need to see her or this mysterious James dude tonight. She needed to dance, and Vinny was going to make sure it happened, no matter what kind of reunion Natasha was planning.)

 

It took a little while for Vinny to find her guy. Somewhere around 4:00 am, she pointed him out to Darcy, and Darcy nodded. Fluidly, she weaved through the throngs of people to come up next to him. Without making eye contact with the guy, she started to dance a little bit in front of him, circling her hips in a blatant invitation.

He took the bait, coming up behind Darcy and rubbing a palm against her hipbone through the layers of tulle. Darcy smiled coyly at him over her shoulder as she linked her fingers with his. After a few minutes, Darcy tugged on his hand, motioning towards a staircase leading to the upper level. 

(Not even a few feet behind her was a guy with long hair and an arm covered in bright silver. He watched Darcy and the guy she was dancing with an angry look on his face. When Darcy started to go upstairs with the other guy, he made a disappointed face and blended back into the crowd.)

 

Vinny’s perp nodded eagerly at her gesture, and Darcy tugged him up the stairs, towards a waiting Vinny and her partner, Detective Roberts. He practically walked right into the handcuffs waiting for him.

Darcy plopped down on a couch tucked into one of the darkened corners of the upper level and waited for Vinny to read the guy his rights. He started yelling about entrapment, but Darcy could barely hear him over the beat of the music.

Vinny sat down beside her. “Stay or go?” she yelled in Darcy’s ear.

Darcy jerked a thumb towards the door, where Detective Roberts was struggling to force the perp out. She was suddenly tired, and the liquor was starting to make her mopey again. Vinny stood and helped Darcy up, leading the shorter woman outside. 

(From a vantage point on the other side of the stairs, Natasha watched the tattooed blonde hustle Darcy outside. Not many people could evade Natasha’s plans, and very few civilians at that. And even fewer people were so blatant about it. Natasha was...intrigued. And the woman had a nice ass.)

 

Darcy rode with Vinny back to the precinct. While Vinny filled out paperwork, Darcy tried to scrub some of her body paint off in the bathroom. When she came back, Vinny was still at her desk, scribbling furiously. Sighing, Darcy poured herself a cup of sludge the cops called coffee and curled up in the visitor’s chair to wait on her friend.

After an hour, Vinny nudged the dozing Darcy. “Street tacos?” she asked the sleepy Darcy.

“Hell yeah, you owe me,” Darcy mumbled as she stretched.

“Heard you brought us a present, Vinny,” a male voice called across the squad room.

“Only ‘cuz I love you so, Ryan,” Vinny replied sweetly.

Darcy turned and saw two men, the shorter one sharply dressed and the taller Hispanic one rockin’ a nice five o’clock shadow and leather jacket, striding through the room. The Hispanic one murmured in the other guys ear, and his partner shot him a disapproving look.

“Detective Mastriani, this is Detective Esposito. He’s my partner in homicide. I trained Vinny back when I was in Vice,” Ryan said, making introductions. 

Vinny shook Detective Esposito’s hand. “Nice to meet you. This is my friend, Darcy. She helped me bag this scumbag,” Vinny said, motioning to Darcy.

Darcy shook hands with the two men. “Nice to meet you,” she said, shivering.

“You must be freezing in that outfit. Would you like my jacket?” Esposito offered to Darcy.

“Oh, um, yeah. Thanks Detective Esposito,” she said awkwardly, hiding a yawn behind her hand. 

“You’re welcome. And please, call me Javier,” he replied, giving her a grin.

“Javier,” she repeated, smiling at him.

While the three cops discussed their case, Darcy curled into Javier’s jacket and sipped her now lukewarm ~~sludge~~ coffee. After a few moments, the detectives went into the interrogation room, and Vinny and Darcy headed out to get breakfast, Darcy still wearing the borrowed leather jacket.

(When she got back to Stark Tower, an hour later, the video feed of her entrance was sent to Bucky’s room. When he saw her disheveled wig and someone else’s leather jacket, he punched a hole through the punching bag hanging in his room. Guess that voicemail meant nothing, after all.)


	16. wings (darcy/sam)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This totally just came to me in the shower. Warning: I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING.

**You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?**

**Rumi**

Sam Wilson has a tattoo. It sits between his shoulder blades, and isn’t more than a few inches wide. The initials RFL, in a messy script, are nestled between two small bird wings. The tattoo isn’t something many people know about - in fact, the only other person who knows exactly what it looks like is the person with a matching one, in the same exact place.

When he starts working with Steve under the newly reformed SHIELD, the higher ups try to tell him to have it removed. Every time, he calmly tells them no. He doesn’t give an explanation or reasoning, just says no and walks away. Steve and Natasha back him up on this, so the officials stop asking.

One day, Steve finally asks him about it. “May I see it?” he asks politely, and Sam can hear between the lines the unspoken _can I sketch it?_

After a moment, Sam nods and turns his back to Steve where they’re sitting on the couch. Wordlessly, he pulls his shirt off over his head, exposing the ink nestled on his spine. 

Within moments, he can hear the scratch of pencil against paper. “It’s for Riley, isn’t it?” Steve asks quietly after a minute.

“Yes and no,” Sam replies thoughtfully. Steve makes an inquisitive noise, and Sam smiles softly. “Riley was a foster kid. He didn’t have anybody to call family, except for another foster kid he called his sister. When she turned 18, they had their last names legally changed and well, adopted each other, so to speak. That was right before Riley and I started basic,” Sam says. 

“Riley’s sister loved poetry, and each week she’d send Riley a new poem she’d read, along with a letter about how college was going. She was a hoot; Riley used to read parts of her letter out loud to our unit, and everybody would be laughing by the end of it,” Sam continues, smiling to himself. “The week before we started the Exo-7 training, Darcy sent him a piece of poetry with the line ‘You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?’ It stuck with us, all through the training and then through all the rescues we did.”

The scratching of the pencil continues behind him as Sam pauses, remembering his partner. “The last time we were on leave, Riley had it tattooed across his back in her handwriting. A week later is when he went down,” Sam says, as tears start to form in his eyes.

He takes a few moments to regain his composure before continuing with his story. “I was the one who gave the flag to his sister at the funeral. I remember her sitting there, with the stiffest spine I’d ever seen outside the Air Force. Afterwards, me and my family took her to dinner. She and I went and got a few beers after that, and that’s when I showed her the photo of his tattoo, and gave her the letter he’d been working on for her. As soon as she saw the tattoo, she dragged me outta the bar and into the nearest tattoo parlor. We got the tattoos together, in his memory. The initials are in his handwriting.”

Sam stops his story there, because the next chapter is still too raw, even three years later. As Steve continues to sketch, Sam remembers the way the tattoo artist drew wings around the initials Riley signed all his letters to Darcy with. He remembers the way Darcy never flinched, even as the needle passed over her spine.

He remembers how Darcy dragged him back into the bar and slammed back four tequila shots before he could even grab a bar stool next to her. He remembers the way her eyes glowed in the neon light with unshed tears.

He remembers the way she curled up on his couch in one of Riley’s old shirts, looking lost as silent tears made tracks down her face. He remembers how he held her until she had finally cried all the tears she’d held in at the funeral and fallen asleep on his couch, dog tags clutched tightly in her fist.

He remembers the way she crawled into bed with him in the wee hours before dawn and tucked her face into the hollow of his throat. He remembered the dampness of his t-shirt and the way her hands slid up his spine to rest over the bandage between his shoulder blades with Riley’s initials underneath it.

He remembers the way he did the same to her, his fingers cupping her shoulder blade, as fragile as any bird wing.

He remembers other things, too. 

Sam’s thoughts return to the present, where Steve is watching him, concerned, the sketchbook abandoned on the coffee table. “You okay?” Steve asks gently.

Sam scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his palms. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he replies after a moment. “I just- I lost track of her after that. I swore to Riley I’d watch out for her, and I haven’t,” Sam admits quietly.

“Why don’t you have JARVIS track her down?” Steve suggests, clapping a hand on Sam’s shoulder.

Sam jumps up excitedly from the couch. “Of course! JARVIS, could you locate Darcy Faith Lewis for me? She’d be about 24 now,” Sam says.

“Of course sir. She is currently located on the 56th floor, in Dr. Foster’s lab,” JARVIS replies promptly.

“Wait, she’s in this building?” Sam asks the AI incredulously. “Does she live here?”

“Negative, sir. She is currently visiting Dr. Foster and Prince Thor. I believe they have made dinner plans.”

“Wait, how does she know Jane?” Steve asks curiously.

“I believe Miss Lewis was Dr. Foster’s intern during Prince Thor’s first landing on earth,” JARVIS answers. “If I might make a suggestion?” he adds politely. “It might be best to ask Miss Lewis these questions yourself, as I believe she and Dr. Foster will be departing in roughly fifteen minutes.”

The two men scramble for the door and run towards the elevator bank. 

Steve stands a few paces behind Sam, offering silent support. Sam watches through the glass walls of the lab as a familiar figure twirls on a chair, lazily wrapping a dark curl around her finger. As Sam walks in, he hears her yell, “Come on, Riley, you can get Uncle Thor to play with you later. It’s time to eat!”

A childlike giggle, followed by Thor’s deeper rumble of a laugh, echoes throughout the lab space. As Jane walks out of the lab’s bathroom towards Darcy, a crouching Thor chases a dark-headed toddler through the lab.

The toddler stops at Sam’s legs, confused by the barrier between him and the door. When he looks up at Sam, he gives Sam a familiar wide smile, holding up his arms to be picked up.

It’s the same smile Sam sees in the mirror each day.

“Riley Samuel Lewis,” Darcy chides sternly, rushing over to pick up her runaway toddler. She scoops him up and settles him on her hip before standing and staring right into Sam’s eyes.

“Sam?” she breathes, clutching the toddler with one hand and the dog tags around her neck with the other.

“Darcy,” he exhales before wrapping his arms around her and baby Riley, one hand unerringly resting over the tattoo between her shoulder blades. He feels her release the dog tags between them and reach around to rest her hand in the same place on his back. Riley babbles in his ear as he leans his head against Sam’s shoulder.

For the first time in almost three years, Sam feels like he could fly again.


	17. peace, not torture (darcy/bucky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the conclusion of the angsty darcy/bucky series!
> 
> TW: there is some discussion of addiction in here. If that triggers you, I would skip the 4th section. (and if I handled it badly or awkwardly, I do sincerely apologize!)

**“Oh Mimi, I love your Papa more than any woman ever loved any man. And still, he loves me a breath more. It’s the only healthy way. If a woman loves too much - if her love is heavier - she won’t see anything but him. She’ll be blind to the world. Women are made like that. We have to teach ourselves not to become obsessed. True love lies in peace, not torture.”**

**Suzanne Palmieri, The Witch of Little Italy**

Darcy realized, after she started hanging out with Vinny, that she needed to make some changes in her life. Darcy had become so wrapped up in being there for her various superpowered friends that she forgot to take time for herself. She was so focused on keeping Jane fed and Bruce calm and Tony on time and Steve up to date and Clint out of trouble and Natasha plied with friendship bracelets.

And Bucky. Oh how she was there for Bucky - not just as a fuckbuddy, which he used her for, but as the one who shielded him from the others. She deftly ran interference whenever she got an inkling that someone was trying to ‘fix’ him.

Darcy had learned the hard way that you can’t fix other people. You can only fix yourself.

So she decided it was high time she did just that.

 

Darcy started out small: she took time, each day, to get out of the Tower. Some days, she’d go prowl through her favorite thrift stores, looking for new records and tacky sweaters. Some days, she’d go explore a different wing of the Met. She joined a book club, filled mostly with old ladies, that focused on murder mysteries. And most days, she ended up meeting Vinny for a bite to eat after Vinny’s shift at the precinct ended. Dinner often turned into beer, which often lead to pool or darts or dancing, and Darcy soon found that many of her evenings were spent away from the Tower.

“So what exactly do you do?” Vinny asked one night over beer.

“Basically, I’m the top lab assistant. I make sure Jane, Bruce and Tony have everything they need to do science,” Darcy replied. “And I make sure they are fed and watered and socialized at appropriate intervals,” she added.

“And you’re happy doing that?” Vinny said, not unkindly, to Darcy.

Darcy shrugged. “I mean I’m not unhappy,” she answered after a moment. “I just wish I was, ya know, actually using my degrees.”

“Wait, degrees as in plural?” Vinny asked, staring at her.

Darcy blushed a little. “Well, I have a degree in political science from Culver. And then, when I was in London with Jane, I got my master’s in computer science from Cambridge. I commuted up there from the city three days a week.”

“What would you like to be doing with those?” Vinny asked curiously.

“Promise you won’t narc on me?” At Vinny’s exasperated eye roll, Darcy continued. “I’m a good hacker. If I could do that legally, somehow, that would be awesome. Preferably in relation to politics, but I’m not picky.”

“Well, I’ll keep an ear to the ground,” Vinny said. “Surely between my sketchy connections and your fancy ones, we can find you a job,” she teased.

 

A few days after the rave bust, Vinny and Darcy were sitting at Vinny’s coffee table, eating Chinese food, when Vinny’s phone buzzed. 

Vinny checked it, and then violently slammed it back down. “What was that about?” Darcy asked, arching an eyebrow at her friend.

“Natasha wants to know if you’ve listened to that voicemail yet. I can’t believe you’re still friends with her, after what she did! And I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that until after I became friends with her too!” Vinny ranted, giving the phone a dirty look.

Darcy waited patiently for Vinny to stop grumbling. “Natasha didn’t ‘do’ anything to me,” Darcy calmly explained after Vinny had calmed down.

“Oh, so making out with your boyfriend was totally cool,” Vinny sniped.

Darcy sighed. They’d had this argument at least a half dozen times since Vinny had met Natasha. “A) he wasn’t my boyfriend. At best, I would call us fuckbuddies. B) it’s not like Natasha intentionally went out and made out with him; he put the moves on her. and C) it’s not a competition. You love who you love, and somebody ‘winning’ you isn’t going to change that. In their own weird way, they love each other. Maybe not romantically, but they’ll always mean something to each other. As someone who loves both of them, I have to accept that and share,” Darcy said pragmatically.

“What got into you? Dr. Phil?” Vinny asked venomously, stabbing her chopsticks into her lo mein. 

“I started seeing my therapist again. I’m not fixed, not by any means, but I don’t feel so broken anymore,” Darcy admitted quietly.

“Oh, Darce, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Vinny replied, deflating.

Darcy leaned her head against Vinny’s shoulder, and the two ate in a companionable silence for a bit. “Wait...why do you have Natasha’s number?” Darcy asked after a moment.

“Uh…….” 

Darcy laughed. “You like her, don’t you? You want to get her naked,” she sing-songed.

“Shut up!” Vinny replied, blushing.

Darcy laughed uproariously for a moment before sobering and reaching for her own phone. “She’s right, you know,” she said, thumb hovering over the voicemail button.

Vinny leaned against Darcy, offering silent support. Darcy grabbed one of her hands and hit the button, setting it to speaker phone.

“Um, hey, Darcy,” came Bucky’s tinny voice out of the phone, echoing through Vinny’s shoebox apartment. “We just got called out, but, um…” he said nervously. His gulp was audible. “I’m sorry for everything. I liked you so much but I went about it all wrong,” he said in a rush, and a soft gasp escaped Darcy’s lips. She could hear Bucky take a deep breath, as if steadying himself, before continuing. “If I didn’t make too much of a mess, I’d like to take you out. Dinner, drinks, dancing, the whole nine yards. I’m...I’m sorry, Darce. So sorry,” he finished, and Darcy could barely make out Steve’s voice in the background yelling at him to hurry up and board. 

The phone fell from Darcy’s grasp and landed on the floor.

“Well shit,” Vinny said eloquently.

“Yeah,” Darcy replied with a watery chuckle. “Shit.”

 

Vinny gave Darcy a ride back to the Tower, and Darcy rode the elevator up to her floor in a daze. The elevator stopped a few floors before hers and, of course, Bucky got on. The doors closed in a nearly silent swoosh and the elevator continued to rise.

Bucky took one look at her and slammed his robotic fist through the control panel, bringing the cage to a complete stop. “We need to talk,” he growled ominously.

“Not if you’re going to act like that,” Darcy scolded harshly as she sat on the elevator floor and took stock of the damage he’d done. Pulling a screwdriver, a pair of pliers and a roll of electrical tape out of her bag, she pried off the panel door and started trying to repair it.

“So my voicemail meant nothing to you?” he asked angrily.

Darcy paused in stripping one of the wires and shot him a dumbfounded look over the top of her glasses. “Really? That’s what you’re going to lead off with?” she asked. “Not, ‘oh Darcy I am so sorry I am a huge, raging ASSHOLE,’ which I feel would be much more appropriate start, or ‘Darcy, I fucked up royally and am here to grovel until you magnanimously decide to forgive me,’ maybe?” she snarked. 

“Well you-” he started, but she cut him off by holding up her hand.

“I don’t talk about my feelings with men who don’t have the balls to say things to my face,” she said prissily.

Bucky slithered down to the floor and slumped against the elevator wall, resting his head on his drawn up knees. Darcy watched him curiously out of the corner of her eye while splicing two of the wires back together. 

The rip of electrical tape blocked out whatever he mumbled. “What was that?” Darcy asked as she wrapped the tape around the wires she was holding together.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“About what?” Darcy asked a little meanly. “You did a lot of fucked up things, so I’m gonna need specifics.”

“I’m sorry I said all those things. I’m sorry I hurt you,” he confessed.

“Okay,” Darcy replied after a moment.

“That’s it? That’s all-” 

Darcy held up her hand again, cutting him off. “Look, I can’t forgive you right now. Eventually, yes, but not right now,” she said gently. “I can hold a grudge. It’s something I’m working on with my therapist,” she admitted.

“Therapist?” he scoffed. “Why do you need a therapist? You’re normal.”

A harsh laugh escaped Darcy’s lips. “Bucky, I was an alcoholic by fifteen and addicted to pills by sixteen. The only reason I’m ‘normal’ now, as you put it,” she said, making air quotes with her free hand, “is because I’ve spent a majority of the last seven years in therapy.”

“Oh,” he said dumbly as she fiddled with a different set of wires.

“I have an addictive personality. I tend to throw myself into things 3000%, whether it be grad school or debauchery, and blind myself to my other responsibilities,” she said, taping together another set of wires. “I had to learn balance. Have to. Am. Not sure what verb tense I should use there,” she mused. Darcy sighed, putting the wires down and turning to face him. “I got addicted to you, and you made me quit cold turkey. Things are going to be ugly a while before they get better,”

“Sorry,” he mumbled again.

She gave him a soft smile. “It’s not your fault. You’re quite easy to get addicted to,” she said, leaning over and giving him a peck on the cheek.

The elevator suddenly lurched back into movement, and Darcy was thrown onto Bucky, knocking him over onto his back. His arms automatically wrapped around her, and Darcy’s face was mere inches away from his.

“I’m sorry for what I said too,” she whispered breathlessly. Somehow, Darcy managed to resist temptation and stood to her feet, instead of kissing the stupid out of Bucky like she wanted to.

“See you around?” she asked hesitantly as the doors opened.

“Yeah,” he said, a smile lurking in the corner of his mouth. “See you around.”

 

After their impromptu confessional in the elevator, Darcy and Bucky started to tentatively be around each other. Darcy would sit directly across from him at the dinner table instead of at the opposite end. Bucky would stop and chat if he was in the labs. Darcy joined his catch-up movie nights with Steve a few times. It took a good six months, at least, but eventually they could joke and tease, like they had in the beginning.

Finally, one night, she invited Bucky and Steve to join her and Natasha and Vinny for beer and darts. Bucky, Steve and Natasha showed up to the bar around 11, and Natasha expertly wove through the crowd of off-duty cops and led the boys to Darcy. 

Darcy was leaning against a tall blonde woman and laughing loudly, beer clutched in her hand, when they walked up. The blonde waved to Natasha, and Bucky and Steve exchanged confused looks.

Bucky could feel the blonde eyeing him while Darcy hugged Natasha. He stared at her coldly, trying to intimidate her, and she just smirked. “Try harder, bionic boy,” she drawled. “I eat punks like you for breakfast. But you,” she said, turning to point at Steve, “I’d definitely have for dessert,” she said with a wink.

“Vinny!” Darcy admonished. 

The blonde rolled her eyes as she took a sip of her beer. “Just sayin!” she said after she swallowed.

Darcy shook her head. “Why do I have such weird friends?” she joked. “Bucky, Steve, this is Vinny. Vinny - Bucky, Steve,” Darcy said, making introductions.

“You’re Vinny?!” Bucky and Steve said simultaneously.

She smiled and gestured to her body. “In the flesh - and ink,” she added, turning so her left arm and its colorful sleeve tattoo faced them.

Steve was instantly drawn in, discussing tattoo styles and artists with Vinny. Bucky ambled over to Darcy, muttering in Natasha’s ear as he passed her.

“Why didn’t you tell me Vinny was a dame?” he asked Darcy conversationally.

Darcy choked on her beer. “I thought you knew!” she said, giggling.

Bucky leaned up against the bar, arm brushing against Darcy’s. “No, I definitely did not know that,” he replied. “It certainly changes things,” he mused, almost to himself.

“What things?” Darcy asked curiously.

“Well,” Bucky drawled, setting his beer on the bar as he turned towards her. “I know now that if I do this,” he said, leaning in and placing a light kiss against her lips. “I probably won’t get punched,” he finished, smiling at her astonished expression as he tucked an errant curl behind her ear.

“I don’t know,” Darcy murmured, “I bet Vinny would if I asked her to,” she said, a mischievous smiling tipping up the corner of her mouth.

“That’s why I brought Steve,” he murmured, leaning in again. “He makes a great distraction,”

Darcy placed a hand on his chest to stop him. “But I thought you thought Vinny was a guy?” she asked confusedly.

“Steve doesn’t discriminate,” Bucky murmured wickedly, “and neither do I.”

“Neither does Vinny,” Darcy said, motioning towards Vinny, who was looking awfully cozy between Steve and Natasha, “nor do I,” she added with a sinful grin of her own.

At Bucky’s slightly shocked look, Darcy laughed loudly. The ringing of her laugh echoed in Bucky’s ears as she pulled him down for another kiss.


	18. hair (darcy/bucky)

**It is quite a risk to spank a wizard for getting hysterical about his hair.**

**Diana Wynne Jones, _Howl’s Moving Castle_**

The villain-of-the-week has robot lizards that spew flame, and all of the team come back singed. Thor’s cape is missing a few inches from the bottom, Tony’s armor is black with soot, one of Sam’s wings is severely damaged, and Bucky and Natasha both lose sections of hair to the flames.

As soon as they come in, Natasha grabs Bucky and makes a beeline for Darcy. “Help,” she pleads to the younger woman, holding up the ends of what used to be her shoulder length hair.

Darcy sighs fondly at Natasha. “Do you want me to go ahead and touch up the color too?” At Natasha’s shrug, Darcy stands from her spot at the kitchen table and starts to head down the hall to her room. “Fine, go shower and order some take out. I want Vietnamese,” she calls out before she rounds the corner.

Natasha points threateningly towards Bucky’s suite. “Be back here in half an hour. Don’t make me come find you,” she says.

“I’d do as the lady says,” Steve says with a smirk as he claps Bucky on the shoulder. 

 

When Bucky returns to the kitchen, Natasha is already leaned back into the sink, with Darcy shampooing her hair. Natasha moans quietly as Darcy scratches her nails against her scalp. Darcy looks at Bucky and juts her chin at the table. “Figure out what you want me to do with that hobo hair,” she instructs, and Bucky notices the array of hair magazines on the kitchen table.

He flicks through them idly, frowning at the thought of losing his long hair. From behind a magazine, he watches as Darcy expertly cuts Natasha's hair. He’s surprised to see Natasha so comfortable with letting someone behind her, but she just chats with Darcy about Dog Cops and some new poisonous nail polish that the scientists in R&D are testing out for her.

Darcy walks around Natasha and squats in front of her. She holds the scissors in her mouth as she compares the ends of Natasha’s hair. “Bangs?” she asks after she takes the scissors back out of her mouth.

Natasha tilts her head as she considers it. “Angled?”

“Eyebrow or cheekbone?” Darcy replies. 

“Eyebrow,” Natasha replies after a moment, and Bucky is utterly bewildered by their words.

Darcy makes a few more snips to Natasha’s hair before pulling hair products out of a massive tote bag. She squirts a mint green gel into her hands and runs them through Natasha’s now chin-length hair, followed by something with a more waxy texture.

Bucky watches, fascinated, as Darcy simultaneously wields a blow dryer and a square brush with dexterity. When she’s done, Natasha’s hair is a coppery shade of red and has a tousled, undone look. The spy inspects her new look in a hand mirror before nodding, a pleased expression on her face as she fluffs the ends of her hair.

“Okay, boy wonder, your turn,” Darcy says menacingly as she snaps her scissors and Natasha gets up from her seat.

Bucky crosses his arms obstinately and shakes his head. “No way, doll. My hair’s fine,” he grumbles. “Don’t need you putting gunk in it.”

Darcy rolls her eyes. “You look like shit,” she says bluntly, holding up the hand mirror to his face so he can see the ragged, uneven ends of his own hair. One side is above his ear while the other brushes against his chin. 

“I’m not gonna let you chop it off!” he says gruffly, slumping further into his chair.

“It’s cuz your ears are so big, isn’t it?” Darcy asks in a fake sympathetic tone. Bucky sputters at her, and she laughs. “Look, hobo, I know what I’m doing. Got my license to dye and everything,” she says, and Bucky chuckles under his breath at her pun. 

“No,” he says again, crossing his arms tighter over his chest. “I don’t want to cut my hair,” he growls.

Darcy turns and gives Natasha an exasperated look, who just shrugs in response. Darcy turns back to Bucky and gives him a slow, assessing look before turning to Natasha and arching an eyebrow in question. Natasha also gives him a look before turning back to Darcy, a mischievous smile quirking up the side of her mouth.

Darcy turns back to Bucky and slaps him across the cheek. “Quit being such a fucking baby,” she admonishes, shaking her hand as Bucky stares at her in shock.

Before he can register what has happened, Natasha and Darcy have maneuvered him into the chair at the sink and Darcy has her hands in his hair, nails scratching his scalp as she shampoos him. Bucky resigns himself to his fate and closes his eyes.

 

Bucky tries not to watch as snippets of his dark hair fall around him. Instead, he stares resolutely at the opposite wall, ignoring Darcy’s attempts at conversation. She finally gives up and quietly snips at the damp strands hanging down one side of his head.

Walking in front of him, she sets her scissors down and picks up her clippers. “Look,” she says, turning them on, “I have to clean up the back of your head. Are you going to freak out if I’m behind you with these?” she asks nervously.

He stares at her for a moment before shaking his head no. Nervously, Darcy moves back behind him. Bucky can feel her run shaking fingers against the nape of his neck, brushing stray strands of hair away, before she starts to trim the edges.

Bucky clenches his jaw, trying not to equate the whine of the clippers with the whine of bigger machinery. 

Darcy quickly finishes, and she turns her clippers off and sets them on the table. She runs her fingers through his newly shorn hair, and her nails scratch reassuringly against the back of his scalp. Bucky almost leans into her touch, and a small smile dances across Darcy’s face.

She hands him the hand mirror as she walks back in front of him. Darcy waits patiently for an opinion while Bucky stares, dumbfounded, into the mirror.

“I look like...me,” he whispers after a long moment as he stares at his reflection. “I remember looking like this.” Bucky looks back up at her, ice blue eyes sharp against the sheen of unshed tears. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

“Yeah, well, I’d almost be okay being seen out in public with you,” Darcy teases in an effort to lighten the mood. A choked laugh escapes his lips and Darcy adds, “Almost.”

“Oh yeah?” he asks, smirking at her. “What would it take?”

“Let Natasha dress you,” Darcy counters, a matching smirk on her face.

“Ok,” he says simply, with no hesitation. “Pick you up at 8?” Darcy falters for a response as he saunters out of the room.

Darcy fans herself with one of the magazines after he leaves. Her grams had been right - change your hair, change your life.


	19. feathers (darcy/sam)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a companion piece to "wings" (chapter 16). I saw this line in the book I was reading today and I knew I had to write more in this 'verse using it.
> 
> Fair warning: I cried writing this. So, you know, be prepared with the tissues.

**She wears her grief like a coat of feathers to heavy for flight.**

**Libba Bray, _The Diviners_**

Darcy feels, deep in her very bones, the moment Riley dies. She wakes up in the middle of the night, fingers grasping at the sheets as she gasps at the remnants of her dream. Frantic, she pulls out her last letter from him, staring at his sloppy handwriting as if the lines would rearrange themselves into a different truth.

Four hours later, as the sun was starting its climb over the horizon, her cellphone rings shrilly. Darcy knows instantly that it was someone very high up calling with very bad news.

Darcy is proud of the way her voice never wavered, even as the man on the phone relayed his terrible message. It stays strong as she called the cemetery, making arrangements for a graveside service for his burial. It stays strong as she called where she worked, requesting time off. It breaks as she cries out Riley’s name and curls into the bed, crying herself back to sleep.

 

Grief sucks all the color out of Darcy. In the week it takes for Riley’s remains to return stateside, Darcy stops laughing, stops playing music at top volume, stops making quips. She becomes a somber shadow of her former self, down to the black and gray clothing she wraps herself in.

The day of his funeral, Darcy dresses in all black. Black pencil skirt, black blouse, black cardigan. Black tights, black heels, black jacket. Large black shades to hide her eyes. Black gloves to hide her ragged nails and torn cuticles.

She glances in the mirror, and a pale ghost of a reflection stares back at her. In a moment of defiance, Darcy swipes a vibrant shade of red against her lips. Riley had always told her she looked good in red.

When she arrives at Arlington Cemetery, she is surprised to see the small crowd of people gathered there. She and Riley were the only family the other had, so she honestly had expected to be the only one there.

A Native American man in a sharply pressed Air Force uniform steps forward, holding out an arm to her, and Darcy recognizes him from the photo Riley had sent her of his unit. “I’m Nathan,” he says solemnly. Darcy nods, and takes his arm.

He escorts her to a seat in the front row of chairs, next to an older African American woman, before returning to the line of men from Riley’s unit who are solemnly lined up behind the coffin.

She straightens her spine as the service begins. _I will not break_ becomes a mantra in her head. A preacher says words that ring hollow in Darcy’s ears as she stares at the gleaming wood of the coffin. A black guy that she recognizes from Riley’s pictures kneels solemnly in front of her and offers her the tightly folded American flag. She stares into his eyes and sees the same kind of despair that lurks inside her own. With shaking hands, she takes the flag from him and clutches it tightly to her chest.

The service is brief, and the coffin is lowered into the ground. The mourners and the men from Riley’s unit come by and offer their condolences, but Darcy does not hear them.

Once the last mourner has left, Darcy walks over to the newly placed headstone and sinks to the ground beside it. Running a gloved finger over the letters of his name, she murmurs, “He was my North, my South, my East and West / My working week and my Sunday rest / my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; / I thought love would last forever: I was wrong.”

A voice behind her recites the rest. “The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, / Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, / Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;”

“For nothing now can ever come to any good,” Darcy finishes with him.

The man who had offered her Riley’s flag sinks to the ground beside her. “I’m Sam,” he says quietly. “Riley’s partner.”

“I recognized you from his photo,” Darcy replies. “I’m Darcy, his sister.”

“I know,” Sam replies. “You’re exactly like he described,” he says with a worn laugh.

“How is that?” Darcy asks, arching an eyebrow at him.

“Strong,” Sam says simply. “Look,” he says tiredly after a moment, “my parents want you to come to dinner with us. Riley was like another son to them.”

Darcy quietly agrees, and Sam helps her up from the ground. He keeps a steady hand on the small of her back as he leads her over to where his parents are waiting, his mother weeping into his father’s shoulder.

The dinner is awkward, as they are all exhausted with their grief. As Sam helps Darcy back into her coat, he hears her mutter, “God I need a drink,” and the way she says it is exactly like Riley would have.

A dry chuckle escapes Sam’s lips, and Darcy shoots him a look. “Sorry,” he sighs, “but you sounded so much like Riley when you said that.” A broken look fleets briefly across her face before she composes it back into the carefully blank expression she had worn all day. “I do too,” Sam says before she can say anything. “Want to get a beer with me?”

 

The two go to a dive bar Sam knows in Georgetown, and they nurse beers as they reminisce about Riley. Darcy finds herself slowly opening up to Sam, telling him stories of Riley protecting her from some of the bigger kids in the orphanage with them and how he’d always made her watch the old John Wayne movies with him.

“I remember him watching _El Dorado_ every time we had some down time,” Sam says, shaking his head. “I can probably quote the damn thing word for word now.”

The corner of Darcy’s lips tilt up in what could almost be a smile. “It was the only one I could stand, because of Mississippi quoting Poe’s poetry all the time.”

Sam fumbles for his phone on the table. “That reminds me - I have something to show you,” he says as he swipes through the photos on his phone. He finds the image he is looking for and passes his phone to Darcy.

A soft sob escapes her lips as she stares, enraptured, at the photo of Riley, proudly showing off the tattoo across his shoulders. She traces the line of the tattoo on the phone screen before standing and grabbing Sam by the wrist.

“Come on,” she says gruffly. The night is lost in a blur of neon lights and buzzing needles, of tequila shots and phantom memories, of hot tears and cold metal pressing into her palm. Of comfort sought and found. Of the hazy gray light before dawn pressing its fingers into her skin as she takes the box of Riley’s things and sneaks out the door, her grief turning her into a shadow left over from the night.

 

Darcy returns to work in New York. She pours herself into her job, working increasingly longer and longer hours until she only vaguely remembers what her apartment looks like. She uses her grief as a fuel to keep pushing on and her work as something to fill the empty space inside of her.

Three months to the day after she got the news of Riley’s death, Darcy wakes up with an odd, fluttering feeling in her chest. All day, she wonders about it. On the way home, she stops at a drugstore to diagnose the flutter. Two giant bottles of water and one trip to the bathroom later, she knows what it is.

 

Riley Samuel Lewis is born in the first few minutes of Riley Fitzgerald Lewis’s birthday. Darcy looks at the date listed on his birth certificate and a single tear slides down her face. 

But then Thor and Jane come into the room, bearing gifts, and the sadness briefly retreats, for how can you be sad when there is a baby to coo over? They exclaim over baby Riley’s tiny fingers and toes and the downy hair that covers his scalp. His soft skin is exactly the same shade as how big Riley liked his coffee - three creams, no sugar - and his eyes are the same shade of blue as Darcy’s. Darcy smiles softly down at the small bundle in her arms, and silently vows that she will never leave him. That he will never know the kind of sadness that weighs her down. That he will be happy, no matter what it takes.

 

Baby Riley slowly alleviates the heavy weight of Darcy’s grief. The first time he smiles at her, Darcy feels a large smile bloom across her face - the first one she’s had in almost a year. His grin, even when he is so small, is large and infectious, filling up his whole face.

Instead of going back to the corporate job she had poured her suffering into, Jane helps Darcy get a job with the Maria Stark Foundation. The apartment she is living in is filled with Darcy’s sorrow, so when her lease ends she finds a new one. Slowly but steadily, she sheds the grief that had been weighing her down.

Fortunately for her, her new job at the Maria Stark Foundation offers day care service, so Darcy is often able to see Riley during her lunch breaks whenever the grief threatens to come back and overwhelm her. It’s a slow and often stumbling process, but the ache in her heart slowly starts to throb a little less.

Riley takes after his namesake in the oddest ways. He loves Darcy’s red lipstick, patting her face every time she wears it. She recites poetry to soothe him when he’s fussy, and he always calms down quickly. He is entranced the first time Darcy plays _El Dorado_ , little eyes avidly tracing the cowboys on the screen. He hates bananas but loves asparagus. Once he learns to walk, he only has two speeds: full blast ahead or dead stop because he’s asleep. Over time, the traits stop making her cry and start making her smile instead.

 

Darcy is infinitely thankful for Thor and Jane. They fold her into their lives, becoming Darcy’s caretakers as she spirals in and out of despair, over whether or not to keep the baby, over what she was going to do. The number of times she has cried herself to sleep on one of their shoulders, only to have Thor carry her to bed and Jane tuck her in, is astronomical.

Thor often babysits while Jane takes Darcy out for pedicures or a movie or just for coffee. Riley takes his first halting steps in Jane’s lab, trying to reach some shiny device on a workbench above him. The three (and a half) have a standing bi-weekly dinner date at a little Italian place not far from Stark Tower, barring alien invasion and science mishaps.

Darcy is heading to meet them in Jane’s lab for one of these dates when everything happens. Thor had picked Riley up from daycare, since Darcy’s meeting with the Foundation board had run late. She could hear the full sound of Riley’s laugh, so much like her own, echo through the lab as Thor pretended to be a bilgesnipe and chase him. Jane is in the bathroom, and Darcy is content to let her son play while she waits.

Content. The feeling is so foreign to her that she has to stop spinning in the desk chair she’s sitting in and think about it, fingers toying with big Riley’s dog tags that she keeps around her neck. Darcy realizes that for the first time in almost three years, she doesn’t feel haunted by sadness. Oh, it’s still there, hovering in the back of her mind, but she can feel happiness alongside it, fighting for dominance.

So she decides to let happiness win for once. Her baby is healthy and happy and loved, and she knows that somewhere, big Riley is watching out for his sister and his tiny namesake. 

With a watery smile, she calls out to her munchkin. “Come on, Riley, you can get Uncle Thor to play with you later. It’s time to eat!” she yells as the doors to the lab behind her slide open.

Baby Riley instantly makes a run for the open door, and is stopped by a man standing in the doorway. With a toddler’s lack of fear for strangers, he holds up his arms, expecting to be picked up. Darcy is instantly up and out of her chair, picking up her baby into her arms. 

When she looks up at the man, she sees a face she’d never expected to see again. “Sam?” she questions, voice cracking as she grips Riley in her arms.

“Darcy,” he exhales, wrapping his muscular arms around them. Darcy instantly tucks her face into the hollow of his throat, much like she had done a lifetime ago. As his hands settle, one cradling Riley’s shoulder and one between her shoulder blades, Darcy releases the dog tags she’s been clutching and reaches up on Sam’s back to trace the tattoo she knows is nestled between his shoulders with her brother’s messy handwriting in the middle of it.

A line from one of Riley’s last letter echoes in her head, and she could hear it in Riley’s voice. _Sam can take your sadness and change it from a weight around your ankle to wings to make you fly. He is one of the best people I know. I hope you two can meet some day._

The grief that had been haunting Darcy for so long spread its wings over her, but they were no longer the dark and ominous things that had been weighing her down. Instead, they gave her hope to one day fly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Darcy and Sam recite is W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues."


	20. wounds

  
**The only thing I know is this: I am full of wounds and still standing on my feet.**

**Nikos Kazantzakis**

The storm raging overhead was a sickly shade of green from the magic that was feeding it. Lightning bolts cracked ominously close to where Thor was standing, but he was not the one calling them down. They were being directed by a pouting blonde Asgardian who had tried to magically seduce Thor.

Her eyes glowed an electric shade of green as lightning crackled at her fingertips. She ran sharp nails down Thor's cheek as she sent a gloating look towards Jane, who was cowering behind a lab table with Darcy.

Natasha and Steve had been the ones to respond to the attack in the labs by Amora, but they were now bound by chains of magical energy. Steve was flexing against his bonds, to no avail, while Natasha was searching the room for a way out.

Darcy caught Natasha's attention by making the sign for diversion. While Amora tried to stick her tongue down Thor's throat (ew), Natasha subtly nodded to Darcy.

Darcy crept towards Thor, not really trying to hide her movements. She managed to briefly brush against Thor's bound hands behind his back before Amora reached around and grabbed her by the hair.

"Did you really think I wouldn't notice you?" Amora taunted Darcy as she held her close. Darcy's hands scrabbled at Amora's bare forearms as Amora wrapped one well-manicured hand around Darcy's throat.

As soon as Amora made physical contact with Darcy, Darcy's eyes started to glow the same eerie shade of green. Her frantic gasps turned into a victorious grin. "You were supposed to," Darcy whispered to Amora as her own hands started to crackle with lightning.

Amora threw Darcy towards the lab wall, and Darcy landed on a pile of broken glass. In the background, Darcy could hear Steve yelling her name, begging God please no. When Darcy looked down, she saw a large piece of glass embedded in her abdomen, the tip pointing out just left of her belly button. Blood ran sluggishly from the wound, staining her favorite pair of jeans. 

"Bitch," she grunted, heaving herself back up. With a clench of her fists, she shot lightning towards Amora, knocking her out of the broken lab window. "Jane," she panted, "open the portal back up. Project it over the window." As Jane frantically turned knobs on the machine, Darcy waved a hand and dissipated the bonds on Thor, Steve, and Natasha. Steve instantly rushed to her side, but Darcy waved him off. "Protect Jane," she ordered him.

She turned to Natasha and gestured towards the piece of glass. "Would you, мамочка?" Wordlessly, Natasha grabbed the glass sticking out from Darcy's back and gave it a vicious pull. Darcy grunted in pain, and she heard Steve make a helpless noise that damn near broke her heart.

Darcy reached out blindly as she fell to her knees and her hand landed on Thor's arm. Her eyes turned a silvery, storm cloud shade of gray as she stood back up, using his arm as support. "Oh, this is going to be fun," she said absentmindedly as she held out the hand that had been covering her wound.

Everyone watched, dumbfounded, as Mjolnir crashed through the wall and landed in her palm, not Thor's. "BRB!" she said with a grin as she spun the hammer a few times and went flying through the door.

"ой моя дочь," Natasha murmured with a smile.

Within minutes, Jane had the portal up and running and projected over the window. The four watched nervously as two female figures grappled in midair, lightning arcing down around them. Amora managed to get Darcy in a choke hold, but then Darcy headbutted her and Amora went staggering backwards. With a well-placed kick to the solar plexus, Darcy knocked her right into the portal. Jane immediately ran back to her machine and closed the portal.

Darcy flew back into the lab and stumbled into a landing. "Here ya go!" she said cheerfully as she passed Mjolnir back to Thor.

“What the hell was that?” Steve exclaimed before scooping her up in his arms and kissing her senseless. _So much for keeping that a secret_ , Darcy thought as she kissed him back.

“Um…” Darcy said as she pulled back from his kiss. “I’m a mutant with the ability to copy other people’s powers?” she replied with an apologetic grin.

“Душа моя,” Natasha chided as she walked up to them. “I thought I taught you better fighting techniques than headbutting.” 

“I know,” Darcy said as Steve sat her gently back down on the floor. “I learned that from дядя Clint.” Natasha shook her head as she gathered Darcy into her own arms, stroking her hair as she whispered in her ear.

Once Darcy had received hugs from everybody, she relaxed onto the ratty old couch in the corner of the lab as Thor, Natasha, Steve and Jane gathered around her.

“How were you able to wield Mjolnir?” Thor asked gravely.

“I copied your powers when I touched you. I guess that includes the ability to wield the hammer,” Darcy replied, shrugging.

“How did you get this power?” Steve asked cautiously.

Darcy arched an eyebrow at him. “Did you seriously not read the briefs on mutants? I was born with it, duh.”

Steve gave her an exasperated look. “I know that. But what you exhibited is an omega-level power, and very few mutants classify as that. How did you end up with such a powerful talent?”

Darcy exchanged a look with Natasha, and with a minute nod from the other woman she answered Steve’s question. “We don’t know exactly, but Professor Xavier theorizes that since both of my parents were genetically modified, it could have affected my genes, leading to a stronger mutation. We do know that my ability to heal rapidly is separate from my mutation, leading him to believe that it is a separately inherited trait. I don’t really understand much after that, seeing as how I failed biology. Twice.”

“So you heal...like I do?” Steve asked.

“Yup,” Darcy replied, lifting her bloodstained shirt to show where the gash in her stomach was already starting to close. “Almost exactly like you,”

“So who are your parents?” Jane asked curiously.

“I am,” Natasha said calmly.

“I’ve never met my father,” Darcy added as everyone stared back and forth between the two women. “I mean, I know who he is, but I haven’t met him yet.”

“He was one of my former partners from the Red Room,” Natasha explained quietly. “His name was-”

“So this is where you ran off to,” called out a sardonic voice from the lab’s doorway. “Never could resist running head first into a fight, could ya punk?” he added as he picked his way through the broken glass and overturned lab equipment to the group.

“-Yasha,” Natasha said quietly as the dark-headed man joined their group.

“Hello, Natalia,” he said with a crooked grin. He turned towards Darcy and held out a hand for her to shake. “I’m Bucky,” he said. “You must be Steve’s dame.”

“Darcy,” she supplied as she tentatively shook his hand. Her eyes instantly turned pitch black as her left arm seemed to ripple and shift into metal.

Bucky instantly jerked his hand out of her grasp. “What the fuck?” he asked, staring at her.

“Well that explains a lot,” Darcy said quietly before passing out.


	21. noir (darcy/bucky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL THE NOIR SLANG. SORRY NOT SORRY.  
> (If you don't understand any, just let me know.)

**The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He’s dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he’s a hero the whole time.**

**Frank Miller**

It happened like a scene out of one of Darcy’s favorite hardboiled films.

It was late one evening, and she was walking the short distance from the private venue where the Senator’s latest fundraiser was being held to a nearby diner for a cup of joe. Granted, she stuck out a bit - dressed in glad rags of a bias cut silk ballgown and faux fur jacket - but the walk was a mere two blocks, and there were guaranteed to be cabs at the diner.

The streetlamp ahead of Darcy flickered weakly a few times before finally going dark. The fog that had been creeping in starting to curl ominously around Darcy’s ankles. “This is getting hinky,” she muttered under her breath as she pulled the lapels of her coat together.

She sped up her steps, just a bit, as she surreptitiously slid her Taser out of her clutch. Darcy managed to make it past the darkened light before she heard the echo of footsteps behind her.

Suddenly, she felt a rough hand grab her hair and yank her back. “Keep your trap shut, lady, and give us the ice,” her captor commanded her as he blew his gin-soaked breath into her face.

“I don’t have any ice,” Darcy gasped out as she blindly pointed her Taser underneath her arm and shot vaguely behind her. The man yelped before falling to the pavement. “Go climb up your thumb, jerk,” she spat out as he twitched on the pavement.

Darcy paused to smooth down her hair before resuming her jaunt to the diner - but she really shouldn’t have. Three more men melted out of the shadows behind the streetlamp. “What was that, girlie?” one of them asked her as they started to prowl towards her. 

Before Darcy could respond, the streetlight flickered back on, revealing a broad-shouldered man, wearing a trench coat and smoking a cigarette, leaning nonchalantly against the light pole. Darcy and her attackers simultaneously turned to look at the man.

“Grab air,” he said menacingly around his cigarette. 

The three men just laughed, but the echoing click of a round being chambered in the stranger’s handgun shut them up real quick. After exchanging a look, three rushed one, leaving Darcy to watch a brawl.

Oh, what beautiful chin music the stranger made. He ducked and dodged the goons’ blows while landing his own on their midsections. One goon, however, got a lucky hit in, one that would probably leave a beautiful shiner. But the stranger’s powerful fists, clad in black leather gloves, almost effortlessly knocked out her three attackers in a 1-2-3 series of uppercuts to each man.

Darcy and the stranger stood silently, tensely waiting to see if her attackers got back up. “You okay?” Darcy called out to the stranger.

“Duck soup, sister,” he responded as he pocketed his gun, and the light from the street lamp highlighted his crooked grin. “Where’s a dame like you headin’ this late at night?”

“The hash house up ahead,” Darcy replied, jerking her chin to where the diner’s neons could be vaguely seen through the fog a block away. “Can I buy a cup of joe for my new hero?”

“I ain’t no hero, sister, but I won’t turn down some java,” he grunted as he stubbed out his cigarette under the toe of an immaculately polished wingtip.

Darcy wove her way through the prone bodies to stand next to the stranger. “Got a deck?” she asked as they started to walk towards the diner.

Arching an eyebrow at her, the stranger reached inside his jacket to pull out a cigarette case and a Zippo. Darcy took one of the offered cigarettes and placed it between her burgundy-painted lips. The stranger leaned down and cupped his hands around the end and lit her cigarette. The orange flame shone in his icy blue eyes, and the shadows gave his face a vulpine look, sharpening his cheekbones and the razor’s edge of his smile.

Darcy took a long drag of her stolen cigarette before exhaling the smoke away from the stranger’s face. Their silent walk to the diner and her illicit gasper calmed her somewhat shaky nerves.

 

The bright lights of the diner highlighted his swelling eye and her rumpled hair. However, their tired waitress didn’t even bat an eyelash at their disheveled appearances, instead bringing them coffee and promptly disappearing.

“You were really behind the eight-ball there, sister,” he said with a Brooklyn drawl as Darcy doctored her coffee. “You’re lucky you didn’t have any ice on you like that goon asked.”

“About that…” Darcy said as she nonchalantly unhooked her coat, revealing the swath of peach-colored diamonds she’d borrowed from Jane perched above her ample decolletage, “I lied,” she said huskily.

The stranger’s eyes briefly darkened as he took in the sight she offered. “You’re makin’ me dizzy there, doll.”

Darcy gave him a wicked smile over the rim of her coffee cup as a response.

 

They drank their coffee in a comfortable silence as the diner’s neon winked off of Darcy’s borrowed gems. After Darcy had finished hers, she threw down a ten and poured herself out of the booth. “Well, thanks for the rescue, Marlowe, but this dame’s gotta get home. See ya around.”

“Marlowe, huh? I always saw myself more of a Spade than a Marlowe.”

Darcy chuckled. “Don’t be daffy. Shining knight in a trench coat? Definitely a Marlowe.” She stretched up on her tip toes to plant a kiss on the cheek opposite his blackening eye. “Hopefully I’ll see you around...and under better circumstances.” She strode out the door and stood on the corner, waiting to flag down an oncoming taxi.

The diner’s bell jingled merrily behind her and Darcy peeked back over her shoulder. “Maybe I should escort you home,” he said lazily.

Darcy arched an eyebrow at him, trying to keep a smile from peeking out from behind her wry expression. “I’ll be okay.”

“Don’t be a bunny. With that much ice around your neck, you’re bound to attack trouble,” he said, slinging a muscled arm across her shoulder and tucking her against his side.

“What if I told you I attracted trouble without the ice?” she asked innocently.

He gave her a husky laugh. “That I would believe, sister.”

“You’re here, aren’t you? You must be trouble then,” she teased.

He leaned in close, lips brushing against the shell of her ear. “The best kind,” he whispered seductively before straightening abruptly and flagging down a cab.

“You tryin’ to pitch woo with me, stranger?” she asked tartly, but an inviting smiled graced her lips.

“Is it working?” he asked hopefully as he opened the cab door for her.

Darcy slid in, giving him a seductive smile as she crooked a finger at him. “Why don’t you come over here and find out?”

 

Darcy stretched luxuriously across her oversized bed in Stark Tower the next morning as remnants of her Chandler-esque dream echoed through her head. Her and a handsome stranger, looking like something out of an Edward Hopper painting, drank coffee at a diner before she dragged him home for mind-blowing sex. It was like something out of the Pre-Code films her great aunt Della used to show her.

The scent of fresh brewed coffee and bacon broke through her reverie. Smiling, Darcy slid out of bed and wrapped her silk kimono around her naked curves and padded towards her kitchen.

The stranger was standing in her kitchen in his boxers and dress shirt, frying bacon as he hummed a Glenn Miller tune. “So where did you learn all those old-fashioned terms?” he asked nonchalantly over his shoulder.

Darcy padded forward and stole his mug of coffee, resting by his elbow on the counter. “I was raised on a steady diet of noir films and pulp detective novels,” she said with a lazy grin as she leaned against the counter. “You?”

“It’s how people talked when I growing up,” he said with a grin.

“Geezer,” she teased as she took the golden stack of waffles to her dining room table. “You know, those thugs were an unexpected plot twist,” she mused.

“Good thing I know you know better than to pull a stunt like that in real life, otherwise I’d be tearing you a new one right now, not makin’ you waffles,” he chided, pointing a finger at her. 

Darcy gave him a cheery smile from the table. “Yes, dear….” she sing-songed. 

Bucky followed with the fresh bacon and a new mug of coffee. “You know, when you suggested roleplaying, I expected something more….” 

“Cliched?” Darcy supplied. 

He shrugged, a faint blush dusting his cheekbones as he sat down. “I just thought you were already getting bored of me,” he admitted as he stabbed a waffle off the stack.

“Bored? Baby, you’re my every Bogart fantasy wrapped into one dark and delicious package,” she said as she munched on some bacon.

“If I’m Bogart, you’re Bacall,” he replied quickly.

“Good answer,” she said proudly. “And if you ever want to do it again, you just whistle,” she purred. “You know how to whistle, don’t you, James? You just put your lips together and-”

Bucky leaned across the table and cut her off with a syrupy-sticky kiss. “Mrs. Barnes, you are trouble,” he said with a mock stern expression as he cupped her jaw in his hand.

“Only the best kind, Mr. Barnes,” she replied with a wink.


	22. curves (darcy/bucky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Thanks for bearing with me. I'm finally adding another story! Since the last update, I've completed a Master's degree (FINALLY.) and can now devote more time and attention to writing.
> 
> That being said, I'm considering expanding on this story/'verse. Let me know what you think of it!

**“The curves of your lips rewrite history.”  
Oscar Wilde, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_**

On June 17, 1930, James Buchanan Barnes fell in love.

Not that he realized it at the time, of course. Or that he would admit it, even if he did realize it. Hell, he was fourteen years old - he’d just discovered the sway he held over girls, and planned on making the most of it for as long as he could.

But on June 17, 1930, he fell in love - during a block fight. The Italians versus the Irish, to be exact. Tony Morelli made some comment about Conall McAvoy’s ma and within ten minutes all the neighborhood kids were battling each other. Steve had immediately jumped in - the fool he was - and Bucky had waded in after him to keep him from dying.

Or worse - losing. (Hey, he was just as Irish as his so-strawberry-blonde-it-was-almost-red-headed friend. Family pride was at stake.)

Bucky had just knocked out Angelo Morelli (Tony’s cousin) when he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. He turned around, and a blue-eyed little girl with wild, dark curls and a shy smile was behind him. He gave her a roguish grin, and tipped his hat at her.

She slugged him.

He saw stars.

When his vision cleared, she was standing - no, gloating - over him as she readjusted the length of chain wrapped around her knuckles. “Puttana,” she spat at him, grinning a little viciously as blood dripped sluggishly from her own split lip. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty,” she said in thickly-accented English, “if I can knock you over.”

His world tilted on his axis and he saw hearts instead of stars.

When his vision cleared again, she was gone.

 

 

On June 17, 1940, Darlene Cecelia Maestrano fell in love.

Unfortunately, so did the five other girls she lived with. But when the handsomest man you’ve ever seen moves into your building to help take care of his sick friend (therefore proving he is handsome and good), what else could they do but sigh and giggle every time he entered the building?

So on June 17, 1940, a handsome man moved in to the apartment two doors down from hers and she fell. Something about the man tugged at her memory, as if she’d met him in another lifetime. The way he tipped his hat any time he ran into the girls in the hallway seemed achingly familiar. 

Two weeks later, Darcy was walking home from a late evening (or rather, early morning) at the nightclub where she worked as a cigarette girl when she heard footsteps and muffled, slightly ominous laughter behind her. She pulled her purse closer to her body and stealthily tried to reach inside for the length of chain she kept there. 

(It was her lucky chain, okay? Ever since she’d knocked out that Irish kid with it in a block fight a decade ago, she’d kept it handy when she went out at night. And would, until they made a better, non-lethal weapon to carry.)

Suddenly, a thick arm wrapped around her waist as someone whispered “play along,” in her ear. Her handsome neighbor - the very object of her affections - then greeted her loudly. “There you are, doll,” he said as he peeked back over her shoulder. “I was waiting on my best girl to get off from work.”

And then he planted a toe-curling, spine-tingling kiss on Darcy’s lips.

So she kissed him back.

And then she slugged him.

As he was sprawled on the sidewalk outside their building, the pieces clicked in Darcy’s memory. Dredging up the accent she’d worked so hard to get rid of, she gave him a sharp little smile and said, “It’s a good thing you’re pretty, if I can knock you over.”

“You!” he said as he rubbed his jaw.

“Me,” Darcy replied.

“I shoulda recognized that chain,” he grumbled. “You certainly grew up nice,” he murmured as he took in the short skirt of Darcy’s uniform and the long expanse of leg that peeked out from underneath her coat.

“I wish I could say the same about you,” Darcy replied, sighing theatrically.

He tipped his head back and laughed, long and loud. His eyes crinkled at the corners and Darcy found herself unwilling entranced. “Bucky Barnes,” he said, holding out a hand. “Mebbe you could help a fella up?”

“But I just love having men sprawled at my feet,” Darcy deadpanned.

“Well, I can’t complain about the view from down here,” he shot back, leering at her. “But this is my best suit and I’d hate to know what’s on this sidewalk.”

Darcy rolled her eyes at his antics and turned around to unlock the building’s front door, ignoring his outstretched hand.

“I never caught your name!” he yelled from his ungainly position on the ground.

“I never threw it!” Darcy retorted as she started to close the door behind her. 

“Bucky? What the hell ya doin’ on the ground?” she heard a third voice ask from outside.

“Fallin’ in love,” Bucky dreamily replied, and Darcy smiled softly to herself as the door clicked shut.

 

 

On June 17, 1950, Darlene Cecelia Barnes, nee Maestrano, gave the universe a vicious smile that was too sharp to be nice, and too deadly to be ignored.

“He is not dead,” she shouted from her rooftop, whiskey bottle sloshing to accent her words. “I will not believe it.” She took a healthy pull from the bottle before continuing. “I will not leave this life until he is back by my side, and we have lived out our lives together,” she swore to the night stars.

And on June 17, 1950, the universe fell a bit in love with a drunken, heartbroken woman - and shifted to accommodate her wishes.

 

 

On an unremarkable night in 2015, Darcy Lewis (formerly Cecy Mays, formerly Leah Barnes, formerly Lena Buchanan, formerly Darcy Barnes, and born Darlene Cecelia Maestrano on June 17, 1920) was rummaging in the Avengers’ communal fridge - trying to find Clint’s leftover Chinese food - when she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder.

Surprised, she reacted by turning around and slugging whoever was standing behind her.

Clint crowed with laughter as he plucked the Chinese food out of her hand. “Damn, short stack, you certainly know how to make a first impression on our new friends and roommates.”

Natasha Gibbs-smacked him on the back of his head as she stole the food container back and handed it to Darcy. “милая, meet зимний солдат, aka James Barnes - Steve’s missing friend he’s told us about.”

Darcy stared at the man sprawled on the ground as he rubbed his jaw with a metal hand. Brooklyn cement was now Stark’s expensive marble tile, and the slick pinstripe suit was now tactical gear, but the scene before her was painfully familiar.

“It’s a good thing you’re pretty,” she said shakily, “if I can knock you over.”

“Thank god you didn’t have that damn chain,” the man on the ground muttered, before looking up sharply.

“I used it to attach the ball to your ankle,” Darcy shot back quickly as Steve and another man helped the man in the floor stand. 

“Dammit, woman,” Bucky growled as he rushed towards her. Everyone in the room immediately pointed a gun at him, afraid he’d reversed back to the Winter Soldier. They were rather surprised when he kissed her. Rather passionately.

“I never caught your name,” Bucky murmured with a grin as they broke apart.

“It’s Mrs. Barnes,” Darcy replied with a soft grin before kissing him again and pulling him out of the room.

 

 

“Well that escalated quickly,” Clint commented on their retreating backs while shoveling Chinese food into his mouth.


	23. fire (darcy/johnny)

** Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell. **

**Joan Crawford**

 

Johnny watched as Darcy, aka the Hot Lab Assistant, managed to corral not only her scientist (on loan from the Avengers for a joint wormhole project) but his brother-in-law to the dinner table as well. Sue gave her a grateful smile before shoving a basket of hot rolls at him. “Johnny, would you take these in?” Sue asked him.

“Oooh, and warm ‘em up too. Cold bread is a travesty,” Darcy called back from the dining room.

“That sweater is a travesty,” Johnny quickly responded, eyeing her oversized atrocity of outerwear. (Why would such a gorgeous girl hide such a great rack?)

“So’s your face, but there’s not a whole lot we can do about that,” Darcy shot back.

Johnny made a face of mock outrage. “Excuse me, but Gucci just paid lots of money to have my face in their ad campaign.”

“Hate to break it to you, fly boy, but it ain’t your face they’re paying for,” Darcy said with a chuckle. “It’s your muscles,” she added in a stage whisper.

Johnny set down the bread basket and flexed his arms. “Oh yeah? What about you, Lewis? Would you pay for these muscles?”

“Sorry, flyboy, but I only date nerds,” Darcy replied.

“That’s true,” Jane interjected. “Just look at Ian,”

“He could talk sweet, sweet science to me any day,” Darcy said, sighing wistfully.

Johnny watched, amused, as Jane came up behind Darcy and purred in her ear. “Higgs-Boson particles,” she said, and Darcy shivered.

“And that’s why I followed her to the butt-end of nowhere, Norway,” Darcy said with a decisive nod as Jane laughed and sat down next to her.

Johnny filed that fact away for a rainy day.

 

Johnny heard the tell-tale jingle of an ankle bracelet, followed by an amused “Whatcha doin’?” from his position on a creeper under the Fantasticar. Beat up Converse appeared in his line of vision.

“The ejection mechanism on this portion of the ‘car is sticking, so I’m trying to fix it,” he grunted as he worked at a particularly stubborn bolt.

“Put a little WD-40 on it,” Darcy suggested sagely.

“Alright, redneck,” Johnny teased. “But that’s not going to help offset the weight from the mechanism. I’m also trying to figure out a way to lighten it so it requires less propulsion to get the ‘car off the ground,” he explained as he rolled out from underneath the vehicle.

“Propulsion, huh?” Darcy asked as she offered him a hand up.

Johnny gave a slightly embarrassed laugh. “Yeah, I’m working on a stealth design,” he answered as he pawed through the blueprints on a nearby workbench.

“I didn’t think stealth was your style,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him over the top of her glasses. “Or work.”

“Hey! I have depths,” he replied. “And I totally work. Modeling is hard work, okay?”

“Right….” Darcy drawled. “Anyway, here’s you a snack. Turkey, bacon, provolone, avocado, and tomato on rye with my special sauce,” she said with a wink, passing him a brown paper bag. “I know with the way your metabolism burns that you’ve got to eat every two to three hours, so eat up!”

“Special sauce, huh?” Johnny said, giving her a leer and a wink.

“Don’t be gross, Storm,” she said with an eye roll.

“I’d eat you up any day, Lewis,” he said, leaning nonchalantly against the workbench in a way that he knew emphasized his lean body.

Darcy just rolled her eyes again as she glanced at his blueprints. “I told you, Storm, I only date nerds,” she reminded him with an idle pat to his chest. The pat turned into a lazy stroke, her nails scratching against his sternum. “Not bad, though,” she said, giving him a sly grin with wine-colored lips he couldn’t seem to stop staring at. “Now eat your sandwich.”

Johnny watched as she walked away, idly chewing on his sandwich. That woman’s mouth was going to be the death of him.

“And you might want to consider streamlining the front of the ‘car for better aerodynamics,” she called out before she rounded the corner from the hangar. “For the stealth version,” she added.

Now how would she know that?

 

Just as Johnny felt that he had perfected the design for the stealth Fantasticar, Reed had to come in and fuck it all up. The two of them got into a yelling match in the hangar - as they always did - that started out as the two of them arguing about aeronautics and ended - much as it always did - in an exchange of insults. Reed eventually stormed out of the hangar, but only after Johnny had gotten so frustrated with him that he’d burnt half of the schematics he was holding.

“God dammit!” he cursed, flinging a wrench against the wall. The clang it made was not near satisfying enough, but Johnny could at least pretend to be enough of an adult not to throw a temper tantrum.

“Hate to interrupt,” Darcy’s voice echoed across the room, “but I have some requisition forms I need you to sign? I took the liberty of setting up contracts with a few suppliers, because it looked like you were getting close to fabricating your stealth designs,” she explained as she weaved through the mess of tools and parts Johnny had left lying about.

“Well, it looks like that won’t happen, because Mr. Fantastic over there fucked up my schematics. And I fucking burnt them,” Johnny growled, waving a hand towards the still smoldering papers on the workbench.

Darcy set her clipboard down on the workbench and slowly approached him. “Well, I also took the liberty of setting up a private server for you, and scanning all your schematics in. So….they’re not actually lost,” she finished as she stopped, mere centimeters from him.

“I could kiss you right now,” he sighed, more in relief than flirtation.

A slow, seductive grin crossed her lips. “I might just let you, now that I know your secret.”

“My secret?” he asked. “I don’t have any secrets. I’m an open book. Just ask TMZ.”

Darcy hooked a finger in the neck of his mechanic’s coveralls and tugged until his ear was level with her mouth. “You’re secretly a nerd,” she whispered, lips brushing against the shell of his ear.

Johnny turned his head and gave her a smoldering grin. “You do like nerds,” he said slowly.

“I really, really do,” she said breathily as she toyed with the zipper on his coveralls.

Johnny did more than just kiss her in thanks.

“So, how many degrees do you have?” Darcy asked as they reclined on the hood of the Fantasticar in the aftermath.

“Um….four?” he replied, a slight blush burning up his neck.

Darcy propped her head up to turn and look at him. “Four? Seriously?”

“Bachelors in mechanical engineering and astronomy, master’s and doctorate in aeronautics, along with pilot training,” he replied, only a little smug. “Sue bet me that I couldn’t get more degrees than her. She lost.”

“So hot,” she murmured, running her nails along his hip.

“So, tell me about these,” Johnny said, tapping the one of the golden cuffs around her wrists in a desperate attempt to change the subject.

“Dr. Johnny Storm, are you embarrassed?” Darcy asked with an incredulous laugh.

Johnny rolled over, trapping her underneath him. “Don’t you know I’m just here to look pretty?” he mumbled into the curve of her neck.

With a snap of her hips, Darcy reversed their positions so that she was straddling him. “Yes, you’re hot as hell - literally,” she told him frankly, “but your brain is so fucking sexy it’s unreal.”

Johnny pulled her in for a toe-curling, heart-warming kiss. “I could fall in love with talk like that,” he murmured against her lips.

“Careful there, flyboy, you’re playing with fire…” she murmured back.

“I thought that was my line,” he replied cheekily as he stroked a hand down her back.

Darcy murmured something in what sounded like Arabic before she kissed him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...this was not actually the direction I was intending to go with this story when I first started writing it. It was going to be another Darcy-with-powers story (I really do love those) but became this instead. But who knows? I might write a part two and have it get back on my original track. (I dropped a few subtle hints as to what she might be, so feel free to guess in the comments!)


	24. hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S WARNING: There is some implied abuse/domestic violence is this one. So if that upsets and/or triggers you in any way, I would suggest you skip this story.

**You loved a man with more hands than a parade full of beggars, and here you stand...Heart leaking something something so strong they can smell it in the street.**  
 **“Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell”**

Darcy doesn’t have much in her new apartment: a sofa that converts into a bed, her precious record player, three cardboard boxes of records, and one uneven bar stool that rests underneath a chipped breakfast bar.

It’s not much, but it’s hers, hers and hers alone. No one else has the key, or even her address. No one else can barge in, leave their smelly socks on the floor, watch football incessantly, demand for another beer. No one else can belittle her here, or make her feel as if she is worth nothing.

To celebrate, she stops by the liquor store and picks up a bottle of cheap champagne. She orders in Indian ( _too spicy_ , a voice complains in the back of her head, but she squashes it quickly) and pulls out her favorite jazz records ( _what is this shit?_ echoes briefly, but she ignores it too).

Satchmo, Ella, the Duke and the Count fill her little apartment - sometimes a little melancholy, but then the brass blares brightly and her spirits swing back up. She hums while eating her food, toes tapping idly against the short leg of the stool.

After dinner is eaten, and the bar wiped down, she puts on her favorite record of all and pulls the now-chilled champagne out of her freezer. Lady Day starts to sing the blues as Darcy pops the cork out, bubbly overflowing onto the floor.

It’s a change of pace, Darcy idly thinks, to see something sparkling and cold spilled across the floor rather than something sticky and red. “To my new home,” she says bravely, toasting the meager space before taking a healthy swallow of champagne.

An abrupt knock at the door almost makes her spit out her champagne. Startled, she trades the bottle for her Taser and sneaks a look through the peephole. A delivery boy is standing on the other side of her door, holding one of the largest bouquets of flowers Darcy has ever seen.

Wary (she’s had enough lectures from her favorite spysassins to know this could be a ploy), she cracks open her door, leaving the security chain in place. “Yes?” she shakily asks.

“Delivery for Darcy Lewis?” a prepubescent voice asks.

With trembling hands, Darcy undoes the chain and opens the door. The boy eyes her as she drops the pen twice before she can sign for her flowers, hands shaking at the thought of Someone knowing where she now lives. Somehow, she manages to keep a grip on the vase long enough the close the door, lock it back, and place the flowers on her bar.

A familiar, comforting scent wafts over her, and she realizes that the bouquet is made up of gardenias - Lady Day’s signature blossom, and Darcy’s favorite flower.

No one has ever sent her flowers before - and only one person knows that.

Her shakes subside, and she pulls out that small card tucked among the blooms. In surprisingly neat penmanship, a note is written:

_To my favorite Lady Day_  
 _\- JBB_

She gives the flowers a smalll, soft smile - the first one to grace her face in a long time. As Lady Day sings about strange fruit hanging in the poplar trees, Darcy breaks off one of the blooms and tucks it behind her ear.

Picking her champagne bottle back up, she takes another drink and turns the volume up.

The melancholy piano chords of “Strange Fruit” give way into brassy horns. Darcy takes another swig of champagne and twirls around her bare living room in her stockinged feet. Something that feels a little bit like joy (such a strange, unfamiliar feeling) comes over her. She sings along, using her champagne bottle as a microphone.

_“Well I would rather my man hit me_  
 _than for him to jump up and hit me_  
 _Ain’t nobody’s business if I do._  
 _I swear I won’t call no copper_  
 _If I’m beat up by my papa…”_

Her voice cracks on the last stanza as she realizes exactly what she is singing, and a tear slips down her cheek to rest on the fading purple bruise on her jaw.

The song ends as she sniffles, and the needle spins off the record. Darcy takes a deep breath, calming her tears, and points her bottle at the record player. “Sorry, Billie, but that’s just stupid. You definitely shoulda called the cops - watching an abusive bastard being handcuffed is just _so_ fulfilling,” Darcy says with a bittersweet smile. “Trust me, I did just that.”

She lifts the bottle high in the air. “To me!” she toasts, before swallowing down the last of the champagne.

She flips the record, places the needle on the groove, and continues to christen her new home with a dance party.

And on the fire escape outside her window, a shadow shifts and moves until it coalesces into a man. He lifts a hand, as if to meet her toast. “To you, my Lady Day,” he murmurs, before leaping elegantly off the stair and landing on the pavement two stories below. The scent of gardenias wraps around him as he merges back into the shadows and disappears into the night.


	25. wondrous subtle thing

**A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other.**

**Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, _The Sign of the Four_**

This was worse than the worst hangover of her life. If that hangover had a hangover, it would still be more pleasant than the way Darcy’s head currently felt.

“What. The. Fuuuuuck,” she groaned, struggling to sit up. Darcy was laying on a damp cement floor in a pitch black room. The darkness was almost palpable, so inky thick that Darcy felt that she could reach out and grab a handful of it.

“Who’s there?” a gravelly male voice asked from somewhere to her left. The voice sounded rusty and disused, as if the darkness had sucked his voice right out of his body.

“Where the fuck am I?” Darcy asked.

“AIM facilities. Somewhere in Eastern Europe, I think.”

“Fuck my life…” Darcy groaned again. This was not where she expected to wake up the morning after her 25th birthday - she was expecting her lumpy bed in Jane’s flat in London, or maybe even next to some hot junior earl or something, but not in the questionable dungeon of a half-rate criminal group.

But who knows? Maybe the voice in the darkness belonged to an attractive man. Gotta have some hope and all that.

Darcy heard shuffling sounds from the same general direction as the voice. “Keep talking to me so I can try and find you,” he said.

“This is so not how I wanted my post-birthday brunch to go,” Darcy said, with a pitiful little sigh. “I am definitely having words with the maitre’d about our seating arrangements,” she said, relying on sarcasm and humor to keep a tight leash on the hysteria that was threatening to creep into her voice.

She heard a rumble of a chuckle from the voice. “This champagne in my mimosa is definitely not Moet,” he said dryly, the voice coming from somewhere behind her now.

“I prefer Dom, actually,” Darcy replied haughtily. “And my waffles are much too crispy.”

“Too crispy? No such thing,” he replied, and Darcy felt a fleeting brush of something against her back. “That you?” he asked, his gravelly voice tumbling down her spine.

“That’s me,” she sighed. “Did you find our waiter?” she asked, voice trembling slightly.

“Yeah, told him to bring us some fresh strawberries for our waffles,” he replied, his hand a warm weight at the small of her back.

“And whip cream?” she asked with a watery chuckle.

“Freshly whipped,” he replied in a serious tone, as his hand slid from her back to her elbow.

“I’m Darcy,” she said, trying to stave off the freak out she could feel coming by keeping up their lighthearted banter.

“I’m -”

The door to their cell creaked open, throwing in a blazing light that blinded the two. Without thought, Darcy slid her hand back so she could grasp his. His hand was warm, with long fingers and a calloused palm. For some reason, Darcy instantly felt confident in facing whatever was coming through that door, because she didn’t have to face it alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [INSERT MARVEL HERO OF YOUR CHOICE] because I couldn't decide who I wanted to use here.


	26. star (darcy/bucky)

 

**That I should love a bright, particular star**

**And think to wed it.”**

**-William Shakespeare, _All’s Well That Ends Well_**

After everything that was London, Darcy takes a year off to travel Europe. Her trust fund is healthy enough that she can use the interest to fund her travels, and her dad has promised her the jet for whenever she’s ready to return home.

So Darcy wanders. She knows enough people from the International Relations program (her minor) that ended up working in foreign countries that she can mostly couch surf through Western Europe.

Fall is spent in the UK, traveling among winding roads as she (finally) masters the art of driving on the left hand side of the road, before jetting off to Paris for a week. Winter is spent in Italy, sampling all of the varieties of pasta and sauces the country has to offer as she criss-crosses across the land. She flies from Naples to Santorini, spending a few days admiring the rainbow of houses tucked into the land before traveling to Athens to see the sights. She flies to Budapest, spends a few days wandering around, before traveling with a friend who is backpacking to Prague. They sample the local beers before heading north to Germany to continue their beerfest. As spring arrives, Darcy travels to see the Dutch tulips and the plethora of vices that Amsterdam allows.

Darcy’s deadline to return to the states is in June. So after the heady experience that was Amsterdam, she decides to see Russia - specifically, Saint Petersburg. (She may have watched _Anastasia_ too many times as a child. What? Dmitri was cute.)

It’s a long flight, and she has to travel economy for the first time in her life. (Ew. Never again will she bitch about the jet.) When she arrives, she immediately seeks out Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, its golden domes winking in the skyline. Even though she is not religious, there is something about the space that is awe-inspiring.

Even armed gunmen respect the sanctity of the cathedral, for they wait until after she leaves it to start shooting at her. 

* * *

As soon as she steps into the dwindling twilight outside the cathedral, Darcy is knocked to the ground. “What the hell?” she grounds out, as an eerily familiar whistle echoes past where she was standing.

“Sweetheart, what’d you do to piss of HYDRA?” a rough voice asks in her ear.

Darcy shrugs as the man pulls her to her feet and around the corner. “I was born? Tased a god? Became besties with someone who likes to rip holes in space for fun? I dunno, take your pick,” she snarks as he tugs her through a maze of narrow alleyways. “What about you?”

“I remembered,” he replies after a moment, voice serious as he returns fire on their pursuers. He takes down two men, but there are still half a dozen more pursuing them. One of their attackers manages to squeeze out a few shots, and Darcy finds herself pulled into the man’s chest, nose buried in his tactical gear. She hears a faint <em>ting ting ting</em> as the bullets whiz towards them, landing squarely on the man’s left arm. Darcy crouches down, part in avoidance and part out of curiosity. On the ground are three smashed bullets, and she picks one up and stares at it in wonder. Before she can say anything, though, the man pulls her to her feet and they continue running.

“Wait,” she pants after a few more twists and turns. “Wait. I’ve got an idea.” He arches an eyebrow at her, and she shoves her messenger bag at him. “Hold that,” she commands, while reaching under her shirt to pull out a thin silver chain. “How do you feel about explosions?” she asks the man with a glint of mischief in her eye.

“Favorably,” he says, a crooked grin on his face.

“Good. You’ll like this.” She removes the chain from around her neck and unhooks it. She wraps one end around a pipe sticking out from the wall next to them, then attaches the other end to a door frame on the opposite side of the alley. “Exit, pursued by a henchman,” she says with a wink, pulling him around the next corner and out of the way.

They wait expectantly for the tell-tale boom. After a few moments, or maybe a lifetime, they hear it, and the two share slightly feral smiles.

“Sweetheart, do you always wear explosives around your neck?” he asks her.

“Only on Tuesdays,” she deadpans. 

* * *

He leads them to a safe house, and Darcy is finally able to call her dad. “Heyyyy,” she says on a whine. “How soon could you have the jet in Saint Petersburg?” she asks him.

“Tomorrow afternoon,” he replies, his voice tinny, and Darcy figures he’s got her on speakerphone while he tinkers with his latest invention. “Why?”

Darcy wraps a curl around her finger. “Wellll,” she drags out, “I might have blown up a coupla blocks with my necklace.”

“Did it actually work?” she hears him ask excitedly. God, sometimes she just loves her dad. She never got grounded for massive property damage - only if her devices didn’t work. “Wait, why are you using that? And in Saint Petersburg?”

Darcy rolls her eyes. “Ugggh,” she groans. “Long story. I’ll tell you when I get home. Love you bye!” she exclaims quickly before hanging up the phone. She turns it off and dismantles it, making sure that she hasn’t been bugged, before stowing the pieces in her bag.

The man is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, politely trying not to eavesdrop. He has removed his tactical gear, and Darcy can see the dull sheen of blood across his shoulder blades where a bullet must have grazed him while he protected her. “Dude,” she says bluntly, “you’re bleeding.”

“Huh,” he replies.

Darcy rolls her eyes again. Men, really. “Dude, sit down. I’ll clean it up.” She herds him to the couch, forcing him to sit, before digging her small first aid kit out of her bag. While she pulls out antiseptic wipes and bandages, he efficiently removes his tac gear and the long sleeve shirt underneath it. Darcy somehow manages not to wolf whistle when his movements reveal toned shoulders and a shiny, metal arm.

She cleans his wound up, and on impulse presses a kiss to the bright red star on his shoulder - right over the chip in the paint where the bullet hit. “Thank you,” she murmurs.

He shrugs. “You should get some sleep,” he advises, gesturing to a door behind them. 

* * *

Darcy wakes up in the middle of the night, gasping for breath. She can hear the ricochet of bullets around her, and the angry yells of their attackers. She stumbles out of the bed and to the door, frantic.

In the hazy moonlight sneaking in through the corner of the blinds, she can see a red star on a metal shoulder.

Star.

Safe.

The words echo through her head as she stumbles back to the bed.

The next morning, the man is gone.

* * *

When she gets on the jet the next morning, her dad is reclining in an armchair, scotch resting at his elbow. “So how much damage did your necklace do?” he asks nonchalantly.

“I don’t know, Dad. We were being chased by HYDRA goons. I didn’t exactly stop to take notes.”

“Remember: the only difference between science and screwing around is…”

“...writing it down, yes I know,” Darcy finishes, rolling her eyes. “I need to remind JARVIS to stop letting you watch MythBusters,” she grumbles under her breath.

“Wait, we? I thought you were traveling alone,” her dad says over her.

Darcy shrugs. “Some dude rescued me,” she said simply.

Her dad gives her his patented you’re-full-of-shit look over the tops of his sunglasses. “Guess I need to reward him for saving the princess, huh? Would the traditional half my kingdom and my daughter’s hand in marriage suffice?” he snarks.

“Daaaaaad,” she groans. “I’m worth at least three quarters of your kingdom.”

“Pepper might be mad you’re only leaving her twenty five percent.”

“That’s more than you gave her! Twelve percent, my ass,” Darcy shoots back.

Her dad just smiles at her, and goes back to reading the paper.

Darcy has another panic attack when she dozes off on the jet. Gasping again, she digs in her bag until she finds a red marker. She draws a crooked star on the inside of her left wrist and falls back asleep, right thumb hovering over her art. 

* * *

Six months later, the red star on her wrist has become permanent, and Darcy has taken over a one of her dad’s spare labs as she analyzes all of the SHIELD data that was dumped online. She has algorithms running in multiple monitors, and she is going through a physical copy of a file codenamed TAHITI with multi-colored highlighters when one of her monitors starts to go on the fritz.

“Shit,” she swears under her breath as the screen flickers, before turning black. “Shit goddamn fuck,” she swears as she crosses to the door to her dad’s lab.

“-and are you sure you don’t want me to touch up the paint? Get rid of those chips?” she hears her dad ask someone.

Darcy hears a rumble of a response as she calls out, “Dad! Your shitty monitor just died on me! I’m stealing one of yours!” She stalks over to a workbench and starts unplugging one of the oversized monitors.

“Here, let me help you with that,” a vaguely familiar voice says behind her.

She whirls around, nearly dropping the monitor. “You,” she breathes out.

“Me,” he replies, giving her a crooked grin.

Darcy stares at him for a moment. He’s cut his hair, and damn if he doesn’t look twice as hot. “Okay, yeah,” she says stupidly after a second, dumping the large monitor into his hands.

“Dammit, Darce,” her dad swears as he comes over. “Not that one!”

“That’s the dude,” she says abruptly, pointing at the guy holding the monitor with her left hand.

Her dad looks at her, looks at him, looks back at her, looks at her wrist, looks back at the guy, looks at his shoulder, then sighs loudly. “Dammit, Darce. You mean I owe fuckin’ Bucky Barnes half my kingdom?”

“Three quarters,” she corrects him, a smirk tucked in the corner of her mouth. “And my hand.”

The man - Bucky - shifts the monitor to under his metal arm and gives her a slow once over. “It’s not your hand I’m interested in,” he murmurs wickedly, and Darcy can feel the blush rise over her cheeks.

“Jeeeeesus fucking Christ,” her dad swears under his breath as he stomps away. “Fucking soldiers…”

Bucky takes a step closer to Darcy and picks up her left hand. “Nice tattoo,” he says, placing a light kiss on the inside of her wrist, right over the red star. Darcy pulls her wrist back and motions to the door leading to her lab.

“Hey Bucky,” she sing songs as he sets the monitor down on her workbench. When he looks over at her, a mischievous glint in his eyes, she gives him her own wicked smile. “Be glad it’s not Tuesday.”

His laugh fills up the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, her dad is Tony Stark.


	27. martini (darcy/sam)

****

I like to have a martini,  
Two at the very most.  
After three I’m under the table,  
After four I’m under my host.

\- Dorothy Parker

When the lobbying session she’s in breaks for lunch, Darcy pulls out her phone to update her boss on the preceedings. She’s surprised, however, to see a text from Steve Rogers.

> _
> 
> This is Steve Rogers. My friend Sam is throwing me a belated birthday party, if you want to join us for drinks tonight.
> 
> _

Darcy had met Steve a few weeks ago when they were both in New York at Stark Tower - Darcy for quarterly reports, and Steve for an Avengers briefing. Pepper had introduced them, since they both spent a significant portion of their time in DC. They had exchanged numbers and email addresses, but Darcy had never expected anything to come of it.

Before she can respond, a second text chimes on her phone - this one from Natasha.

> _
> 
> COME. or otherwise it’s a sausage fest and i am not about that life.
> 
> _

Darcy snorts as Natasha sends her another text, this one full of pig emojis, followed by a Snapchat where she is making a decidedly unattractive face with the caption ‘BOYS’.

Darcy shakes her head at the redhead’s antics and texts her back.

> _
> 
> UGH FINE stop being dramatic.
> 
> _

Natasha’s response is almost instantaneous. First she sends Darcy a Snapchat with a kissy face, followed by a text.

> _
> 
> YAAASSSSSSSSS can I borrow your studded Louboutins?
> 
> _

Darcy rolls her eyes and texts Natasha back.

> _
> 
> Only if I can wear that red dress with the cutouts.
> 
> _

She sends a much politer text to Steve, confirming that she will come, before throwing her phone in her purse and heading to a nearby cafe to grab lunch.

 

 

When finally she gets back to her apartment that night, Natasha is flipping through Glamour while laying on her couch. “I brought Nando’s,” she says in lieu of a greeting.

“Is this some kind of reverse burglary? Break in, bring me stuff?” Darcy asks with a laugh as she unceremoniously dumps her purse, suit jacket, and heels on the floor.

“Shut up and eat your peri-peri,” Natasha says as she flips pages. “We’re supposed to meet them at 9.”

“Ugh seriously?,” Darcy says, making a face. “Who goes out at nine?” She pulls a knife and fork out of a drawer and digs into the the food Natasha had brought.

“You know Steve is a total grandpa about shit like that,” Natasha replies, and Darcy swears she can hear the other woman’s eyes roll. “I have to set a good example, I’m Captain America,” she says in a nasally voice.

Darcy laughs around her mouthful of rice. “You sound like Rizzo making fun of Sandy,” she says after she swallows.

Natasha, ever the clown around people she considers friends, stands up on the couch and starts singing. “Look at me, I’m Steven Grant, won’t let a girl in my grandpa pants…”

Darcy laughs so hard she has to lay her head down on the counter.

 

 

Darcy and Natasha share a cab to the bar where they are meeting everyone. “So who all is coming?” Darcy asks as she checks her makeup in a small mirror.

“Sam, Steve, James, Maria, Sharon, Tripp, Bobbi, Mack, Lance, a few of Sam’s dude friends from the VA, some girl Maria knows from SI, and us,” Natasha replies, counting people off on her fingers.

“Ugh, is it Kathy from HR? Because you know she hates me after my live tweet of Tony’s trial went viral.”

“No, I think it’s Jessamyn from Legal,” Natasha says around her lip gloss wand.

“Oh, she’s hella cool. Always has the best jewelry,” Darcy says, stealing Natasha’s lip gloss and applying a coat.

The cab pulls up to the bar, and the two women fumble money out of their bras to pay for it. Giggling at the driver’s gobsmacked look, they slide out of the cab and go wait in line at the door to have their IDs checked. It’s almost 10 - Natasha had refused to show up for the ‘old geezer early bird specials’ - and the bar is starting to get a little more crowded. Darcy twists her hair up off her neck. “Ugh,” she groans, “I’m going to melt off my makeup before we even get inside,” she complains. “I forgot how much the city sucks in July.”

Natasha grabs her hand and pulls her out of the line. “Follow my lead,” she mutters before giggling loudly and weaving her way up to the bouncers. “Hi Mikey!” she chirps, waving at one of the men and bouncing.

“Natalie!” he says, smiling at them. “Long time no see!” Natasha just shrugs, and he opens the door and lets them in.

Right away, Darcy spots Steve, standing head and shoulders above almost everybody else. She waves, trying to catch his attention, but Natasha just barrels through the crowd, towing Darcy in her wake. The air conditioning is a blessed relief, and Darcy lets go of her hair and lets it tumble down her back.

Natasha heads straight for a man with shaggy dark hair and a metal arm. “How many shots have you had?” she asks him as she bellies up to the bar.

He tosses the one in his hand back. “Six,” he tells her, grinning smugly.

Natasha turns to the bartender. “Six shots of Stoli, please. Chilled. Just line ‘em up here,” she says, tapping the empty space on the bar in front of her.

Darcy shakes her head at them as she squeezes into a space next to Natasha. “You two are a real life Nick and Nora, aren’t you?” she asks Natasha.

“Ya really think so?” the man asks Darcy. “Hey ‘Talia, how would I look-”

“No,” Natasha states flatly, cutting him off as she slams one of the shot glasses back on the bar. He just pouts at her, and Natasha puts a hand on his face and pushes him away.

“Raspberry lemon drop, please!” Darcy calls out to the bartender, ignoring their weird flirtation. 

As she’s waiting on her drink, a lean black man in dark jeans and an olive green t-shirt hanging off well-defined shoulders comes up to them. “Nat! Glad you came,” he says, giving the redhead a hug.

“Sam, Darcy; Darcy, Sam,” Natasha says, gesturing between the two of them before turning back to her line of shots.

Darcy holds out her hand for him to shake. “Darcy Lewis,” she offers.

He shakes her hand, and Darcy can’t help but notice his firm grip and interesting callouses. “Sam Wilson. I organized this shindig. So how do you know Steve?”

Darcy releases his grip as the bartender sets her martini down in front of her. She takes a delicate sip, licking some of the sugar off the rim of the glass, before turning back to Sam. “I, uh...we have some mutual friends,” she stutters, noticing how his eyes have darkened and gone straight to her mouth.

“Oh, so you probably know some of these people, right?” he says, gesturing towards a large table in corner where Maria and some other people are sitting.

Darcy shakes her head. “Just Natasha and Maria, really.”

Sam places a warm hand in the small of her back. “Well let me make some introductions…" 

 

 

Darcy wakes up to the sound of the shower running. She figured it was just Natasha, but when she opened her eyes and looked around she realized that _this was not her apartment._

Eyes blurry from having slept in her contacts, she can sort of see her phone in the pile of her clothes at the end of the bed. She clambers down the bed and hurriedly grabs it and fires off a text to Natasha.

> _
> 
> How many martinis did I have?!?!
> 
> _

The shower shuts off, and Darcy tries not to hyperventilate while waiting for Natasha to reply.

> _
> 
> 3 or 4
> 
> why are you awake this early
> 
> why am i awake this early
> 
> _

Darcy inhales sharply and fumbles back a response.

> _
> 
> Was it 3 or 4. I NEED TO KNOW BECAUSE OF REASONS
> 
> _

Before Natasha can respond, however, the door to the bathroom opens, letting out a cloud of steam. Darcy frantically shoves her phone back in the pile of clothes and sits up, trying to act nonchalant.

“Oh, hey, you’re awake,” Sam says casually as he clutches a towel around his waist.

“Did we-?” Darcy asks nervously, gesturing wildly between them.

Sam’s cheeks redden slightly. “No! I mean, no,” he answers, muttering something under his breath. “Steve didn’t want you taking a cab by yourself that late at night, so we were going to share one with you. But then you kind of…”

“...fell asleep in the cab?” Darcy supplied, feeling the blush start to crawl up her cheeks.

Sam laughed. “I managed to get you awake enough to get you in the house and loan you a shirt to sleep in. That happen often?”

Darcy looks down, noticing the oversized Air Force shirt she’s wearing. “Ooh, Air Force, my fave,” she murmurs, and Sam gives her a happy smile. She then shrugs, trying to ignore the way her insides flipped at that smile and the droplets of water trailing down his abs. “With three martinis, yeah.”

“So uh...what happens with four martinis?” he asks casually, hands clenching around his towel.

Darcy looks up through her lashes at him, noticing the way his gaze has dropped to where her nipples are probably visible underneath his shirt. Bits and pieces of last night start to filter through her memory - like the way he sat too close to her all night, the way he watched her lick the sugar off the rims of her martinis, the ways his shoulders looked as he and Lance played darts.

She stands up off the bed and slowly moves takes the two large steps between the bed and him. She smiles up at him knowingly as she slides her hands down his hipbones to also grab onto the towel. “I only have a martini, two at the most,” she recites, slowly pulling him backwards with his towel. 

He gulps nervously, the movement making his chest brush against her breasts. She gives a breathy little gasp before continuing backwards.“Because after three I’m under the table,” she says, grinning as the back of her legs hit the bed.

An understanding look starts to cross his face, and Darcy gives the towel a sharp tug, sending the two of them sprawling onto the bed. She wraps the towel around her fists, forcing him to stay in vee of her legs. “And after four I’m under the host,” she murmurs into the damp skin of his neck, before pressing a kiss to his throat.

He rubs his hips against her, and she moans softly. “Good thing I bought you that fourth martini right before we left, then,” he says, smirking, before he kisses her.


	28. heat (darcy/bucky)

****

In the heat of the moment, sometimes being wanted and desired was more important, more powerful than love.  
Jennifer Skully, _She’s Gotta Be Mine_  


 

“Why are you here, Lewis?” Bucky asked, scrubbing his hands against his face.

Darcy faltered, her brilliant plan of seduce and distract seeming rather petty in light of his brusque tone. Her fingers clutched at the strap of her messenger bag until her knuckles started to turn white. Fortifying her courage, she inhaled deeply, straightening her spine and pushing her breasts forward. With a careless smirk, she said, “You once told me you’d be the best fuck I’d ever had. I’m here to see if it’s true.”

He reached out and grabbed the strap of her bag, bionic fingers clanking against the metal buckle. With a rough jerk, he pulled her towards him, until her body was flush against his. There was no preamble - no pretty words of love and devotion, no soft touches intended to soothe and reassure. In an instant, his mouth was on hers, demanding and devouring. He shoved the strap to her bag off her shoulder, and it fell in puddle around her feet - soon joined by her jacket, hat, scarf and sweater.

Darcy slid her feet out of her boots as she raked her fingernails down his bare back. He growled into her mouth and grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulling her head back to expose her throat. He nipped at the junction of her neck and shoulder while thumbing open the fly of her jeans. She shimmied out of them quickly. 

Darcy then braced her hands on his shoulders and jumped, wrapping her legs around his waist. He continued to suck at her throat as he back her up against the nearest wall.

Darcy mind glazed over at the sensations he was giving her. She didn’t think anymore - only felt. Heat seemed to flood her body as they gave into lust. 

Her last coherent thought was that it was just nice to feel _something_ for once.

 

Bucky was every bit the lover he had claimed to be - taking her once against the wall before carrying her to his bed and going down on her until his name became the only benediction her lips knew how to form. Then he knelt over her and slowly drove her to the brink of pleasure again, until she was clawing at his back again. She buried her teeth into his shoulder as she came for a third time, and that drove him over the edge after her.

They lay there for a moment afterwards, Bucky’s face buried underneath her hair in the curve of her shoulder, while Darcy bonelessly flung one arm over her eyes to shield them from the brightness.

After a few moments, he murmured an apology into her throat as he disentangled himself and went to the bathroom to take care of the condom. Silence seemed to echo in his wake, and the gnawing emptiness that had surrounded Darcy for the past few weeks seemed to settle back around her shoulders, like the familiar weight of an old sweatshirt. Numbness seemed to settle in her bones as she followed the trail of her clothes back to the entryway, tugging them on as she found each item.

She had slipped her sweater back over her head and was pulling her hair out from the collar when Bucky reappeared. “Leaving already?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah, I got what I came for,” she answered harshly, that emptiness robbing her of any politeness she might have had.

But Bucky just arched an eyebrow at her. “You in that much of a hurry to get back to the lab?” he asked, an almost teasing note to his voice.

Darcy let out a long exhale, blowing a wayward curl off her face. “No, not really,” she admitted.

“Then stay, have a beer,” he offered. “We’ll watch football and yell at the refs.”

A hint of a smile crossed her face, and Darcy shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”

They settled in on opposite ends of the couch, each with a bottle of beer in hand. Bucky flipped channels until he found a game on. Within minutes, he was heckling a first down call, but Darcy just quietly sipped her beer, gaze not even on the TV screen.

She felt him look over at her, ice blue gaze raking against her skin, and she curled further into the couch. Bucky muted the TV and slowly, gently, reached over and pulled the beer bottle from her hands. “Hey now,” he murmured, tucking a curl behind her ear. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Darcy said flatly. “I’m fine.”

“Then what was that about earlier?” he asked, gesturing to the wall where he had fucked her not all too long ago.

Darcy shrugged. “I just wanted to feel something, that’s all.”

He gave her a long, slow grin. “You certainly felt something, all right.”

Darcy shot him an unimpressed glare. “Not funny, Barnes.”

“It kinda is,” he said unrepentantly. “You have to admit, you set yourself up for that.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Don’t be crass,” she chided him before standing and tugging her boots on.

Bucky reached out and grabbed her wrist, tugging her back down next to him on the couch. “Seriously, Lewis. What’s wrong?”

Darcy just stared at the hole in the knee of her jeans and picked idly at a stray thread. Bucky stroked down her spine, and it was like he pulled a lever that just made the words tumble out of her mouth. “I just...can’t feel anything anymore. It’s like...I’m this giant hole of apathy and the only thing that seems to be able to escape is anger. And annoyance. And frustration. And being angry is so tiring, so I just seem to sink back in this state of not feeling anything.”

Bucky ran a soothing hand down her back as she paused to take a deep, shuddery breath. “I just...wanted to feel something. Anything. And your stupid face kept popping into my mind so I figured, why not?” she said, gesturing to him.

“Thanks for the ringing endorsement,” he said dryly. She rolled her eyes at him, and he grinned cheekily at her. “But any time you wanna feel something,” he said, wagging his eyebrows at her, “come on by.”

Darcy gave him an unimpressed look. “You wish,” she said flatly.

“Shut up and drink your beer,” he said, passing the bottle back.

She took it and took a long drink. Bucky unmuted the game, and they turned their attention back to the game. “My grandmother saw that block and she’s legally blind!” Darcy yelled at the ref after a few moments. Bucky gave her a smirk and tipped his beer bottle against hers in a toast. 

And somehow, the gaping void in her chest shrunk, just a little bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darcy's speech about apathy and anger? Yeah, she's not the only one right now. Updates may not happen for a while, sorry.


	29. spiderweb lines (darcy/eliot spencer)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everybody! Thank you so much for your support and comments and everything. I kinda took a hiatus, and during that time started watching Leverage. And now....well, if you follow me on tumblr you're probably aware that I might be a little bit obsessed with Christian Kane right now. (ugh, just. ugh.)
> 
> So I wrote this as an introduction to a possible crossover story. I'm posting it here because 1) this quote fits the feel I was aiming towards at the end, and 2) I kinda want to feel out reactions to this story/pairing? So please, let me know what you think.
> 
> Much love,  
> Sam

**But then he lowered his head, and up close she could see the tiny spiderweb lines around his eyes, and it looked as if his ear had been pierced at one time. Those things told stories about him, storyteller’s stories, spinning yarns, lulling her into listening. She didn’t want to know so much about him, but one tiny bit of curiosity and she was done for.**

** Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells **

Darcy made it to Boston by nightfall, and decided to grab a bite to eat before deciding whether or not to keep driving that night.  She drove aimlessly for a while, looking for some hole in the wall diner or bar to stop at.  She passed on called McRory’s, and she heard her great-grandda’s voice in her head.   _Darcy Kathleen, a good Irish lass never passes a good Irish pub without stoppin’ in for a whiskey or two._

She looped back around the block before she found a parking spot.  Locking her car (it did hold all her earthly possessions, after all), she settled her messenger bag across her body and strode down the block.

When she opened the basement door to McRory’s, Darcy was met with a wall of sound.  What looked like a bunch of off-duty cops were bellied up to the bar, all hollering for beer and trying to clap an older guy on the shoulder or back.  The poor lady behind the bar looked beyond frazzled, and Darcy’s bartender senses started tingling.

Darcy slid behind the bar, shucking her coat and bag. “Need some help?” Darcy asked the woman.

The woman just flapped her hands at the cops.  “You handle them, I’ll thank ya forever.  You the new girl?”

Darcy held out her hand.  “Darcy,” she said, introducing herself.

“Cora,” the other woman said, briefly shaking her hand.

“Baby we need shots!” one of the cops yelled at the women.  Darcy and Cora shared an eyeroll as Darcy wove around her towards the men.

“All right, hon, whatcha need?” Darcy drawled, folding her arms on the bar in a way she knew emphasized her cleavage.

He briefly leered at her before ordering.  “Ten car bombs for me and the boys here. Make ‘em stout.”

Darcy saluted him and began to expertly flip shot glasses onto the bar.  She turned around and searched through the shelves until she found ten pint glasses, and quickly filled each one halfway with Guinness.  

A few quick turns back and forth between the taps and the bar soon had all the pints lined up the the shot glasses.  Jameson bottle in one hand and Bailey’s in the other, Darcy layered the liquors in the shot glasses.  “Alrighty boys,” she said loudly, getting the men’s attention.  “ _Slainte_.”

The men toasted her with their shots before dropping them into the Guinness and chugging them.

 

* * *

 

Eliot was in the middle of wiping down the grill when Cora came back into the kitchen.   “Whew,” she said, hopping up to sit on the counter next to the grill.  “That was quite the rush.”

“I wish Bonanno woulda let us know he was bringing all his guys in to celebrate closin’ a case,” Eliot grumbled as he scraped off the grease.

Cora laughed.  “It’s money in the bank, boss. By the way, that new girl you hired is great.  Even got old MacCready to actually tip.”

“New girl?” Eliot echoed, forehead wrinkling.  “She called to say she got a job elsewhere...right before the rush hit, I think.  Guess I forgot to tell you.”

“Huh,” Cora said, munching on a leftover fry.  “Well, then you should hire this girl.  She just jumped right in and handled those state police like it was no big deal.  Even offered to close down the bar so I could get home and rest,” Cora said, one hand absently rubbing her belly.

Eliot just grunted in response.  While he, Parker and Hardison technically owned the bar now, they mostly let Cora call the shots - since she’d been raised in it and all.  She knew that bar better than almost anyone.  However, Eliot wasn’t comfortable hiring some girl - even if she just jumped up to help - without having Hardison run a background check first.

_Especially_ if she just jumped in to help.  The only people Eliot knew who inserted themselves into situations like that were grifters, and grifters were always trouble.

(Including Tara. And _especially_ Sophie.)

From the corner of his eye, Eliot could see Cora roll her eyes at him.  “You gotta hire someone.  I’m not working those eight- and twelve-hour shifts once I start showing.”

“Fine, fine,” he grumbled some more.  “I’ll go check her out. Take your dinner and go home,” he said, jerking his chin towards the walk in where he’d put the panini and steamed veggies he’d made for Cora earlier.

Cora hopped off the counter and headed towards the walk in, kissing his cheek as she passed him.  “Thanks, El.  See ya tomorrow!”

Eliot washed his hands and hung up his chef’s jacket quickly, before heading out through the swinging doors towards the bar.  He paused there for a moment to observe the girl.

She had dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, and Eliot could see where small curls had escaped to frame her face.  She had on jeans, tall boots, and an oversized flannel shirt that somewhat disguised what Eliot guessed to be a rather impressive rack.

Some of the younger guys from Bonanno’s unit were still at the bar, and Eliot watched as the girl expertly flipped a whiskey bottle around her hand before making two Jack and Cokes.  

Everything about her screamed civilian, but at the same time she seemed highly aware of where everyone in the room was, including him.  As she returned the Jack to the shelf, she gave him a brief nod of acknowledgement. She then moved to the tap to pour a mug of Shiner and he eyeballed the spout, debating on whether or not to have one before heading home.

The girl smoothly slid the mug down the bar and it slid to a stop in front of his usual stool.  “You look like the type,” she called out, giving him a cheeky smile.

Shrugging, he sat down and took a sip.

 

* * *

 

Darcy watched the man from the kitchen sip his beer out of the corner of her eye while she closed out tabs.  She figured he was the mysterious ‘Eliot’ that Cora had said would check out her closing job.

His hair was longer than she would have expected, pulled back in a small ponytail at the base of his skull.  He had a blue bandana on over it, and was wearing faded jeans, a rather tight red henley, and cowboy boots.

Before she could ogle him further, her two Jack and Coke drinkers from earlier called her over.  “Hey sweetheart,” one of them slurred, reaching out to wrap a finger around the end of her ponytail.  Before Darcy could really think about it, she grabbed the man’s wrist and used a move Natasha had taught her to slam his face into the bar top.  

“Okay, then, buck-o, if you can’t even lean on the bar without falling over, I’m going to have to cut you off,” Darcy said loudly to hide what she had done.  The other men with him started razzing him, and Darcy got them to all sign their tabs and quickly head out.

Since they were the last customers, she went ahead and locked the door behind them and pulled the shade down, even though it was still an hour until the bar officially closed.  She could feel the man from the kitchen’s eyes on her as she straightened the bar stools and wiped down the bar top.

When she reached where he was sitting, she hopped up onto one of the bar stools and rested an elbow on the bar.

He turned to look at her.  “You’re not the new girl I hired,” he said, his voice gruff and with a hint of a southern drawl.

“But I’m the one who showed up and worked,” she replied quickly, propping a fist under her chin.

He tilted his head in acknowledgement and finished off his beer.  “You lookin’ for a job?” he asked as he sat the mug down.

Darcy shrugged.  “I was just passin’ through, but I think I could like stayin’ here,” she said, his drawl bringing out her own long-buried Texas twang.

He gave her a slow head to toe perusal, and Darcy found herself suddenly short of breath when his ice blue eyes met hers.  “What makes ya think that?” he growled out.

An impish smile crossed Darcy’s face.  She climbed up onto the bar top, swinging her legs around so she could hop down on the other side of the bar.  She dug through her messenger bag to find her ipod and then plugged it into the bar’s sound system.  A quick flick through her songs and she found the one she was looking for.  Ray Benson began to sing, and when he reached the chorus, Darcy chimed in.

“Shake hands, it’s grand you’re from Texas, ‘cause I’m from Texas too!”

Darcy could see the man fight the smile that started to cross his face.  His mouth twitched, but then it broke out into a full fledged grin.  His eyes crinkled at the corners, and Darcy found herself absolutely mesmerized by those laugh lines.

_Don’t go there, girl,_ she told herself firmly.   _That’s how it started with Clint.  First it was the laugh lines and then the biceps and before you know it you’re bleeding out on the lab floor._

He held out a hand.  “You’re hired.  I’m Eliot Spencer. I’m the cook. And co-owner, I guess,” he said.

“Darcy Lewis,” she replied, shaking his hand.  “I’ve just got to restock and then you can lock up.”

“Here, I’ll carry those 30-packs,” he said, hopping down from the bar stool.  As he went to the back to get them, Darcy married a few of the wells that were getting low and rinsed off the extra free pours with soda water.

Eliot came back out, carrying four 30-packs of domestic beers out from the cooler. His biceps strained against the sleeves of his henley.

“Goddammit,” Darcy swore under her breath.

  
  



	30. under your tongue (darcy/bucky)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a companion piece to 'curves' (chapter 22), in which Darcy and Bucky are married in 1942, and she does not age.

**If you tuck the name of a loved one**  
**under your tongue too long**  
**without speaking it  
** **it becomes blood.**

**Naomi Shihab Nye, “Hidden”**

  
Darcy’s family gives her a year to mourn the death of her husband.  Her cousins and aunts and uncles circle around her warily, fearful not of the torrential downpour of tears (which happens a few times), but of the bloody, furious wrath that envelops her.

How _dare_ the universe treat her like that. It makes her so _angry_ to see these happy war brides, their soldiers home safe from the war, while she - who has already suffered so much - will never be able to see hers again.

Her anger is a cold anger, like thick glacial ice.  It freezes over her heart, burying her husband's name under feet and feet of snow, until her mouth no longer remembers how to form the syllables of his name.  Until his voice is only an echo in the corners of her brain that she never thinks about.

Her _nonno_ is the only one brave enough to withstand her cold fury.  He teaches her to hone it, to wield it much like his _capitani_ wield knives in back alley brawls.  Her soft voice, in either fluid Italian or the sharp staccato tones of her no-longer-accented English, becomes powerful enough, dangerous enough to make a man stop in his tracks.

She rises in the ranks in her family’s organization until she earns her own nickname: _La Vedova_ , or The Widow.  A black, netted veil becomes a permanent fixture, shadowing her glacial eyes and emphasizing the sharp curve of her dangerous mouth.

Soon, she becomes a second to Severino ‘Sixes’ Morelli, one of the most feared gangsters in New York - and her _nonno_.  Her cousin Tino is the right hand, the obvious fist that strikes down opponents.  But Darcy - Darcy is the left hand, the slippery fingers of a pickpocket that lift priceless jewels and the fat wallets of politicians.  She is the shadow that trails you late at night when you are walking where you should not be.  She is cold, she is ruthless, and she is out for blood.

She is _La Vedova_ , the widow - and no one dares to ask what happened to her husband.

But deep inside, underneath the fury and the ice, in the smallest, most withered portion of her heart, lies a name:

_ James Buchanan Barnes. _

 

_ Bucky. _

 

 

* * *

 

 

For ten years, Darcy successfully runs the organization from the shadow of her grandfather’s throne.  She moves people around like chess pieces, sacrificing her pawns so the king is always safe.  

It comes as an unseen, unexpected blow when her _nonno_ is caught between the crossfire of the Cubans and the police as he left his barbershop.   Wrong place, wrong time, they tell her.

The throne has been knocked over and the shadows no longer hide her.  She steps up, rights the throne, and fills its seat.  No one, not even Tino, questions it.

But no one can replace Sixes.

 

 

After about a year, the organization starts to fall apart.  Darcy studies her battered pawns, the crumbling bishops, and the knights suddenly exposed to capture.  She stays in the hidden throne room, nose buried in ledgers, trying to find a way to funnel out the funds into legitimate means so she can finally retire all of her pieces from her chessboard.

A quiet knock sounds at the door to her office.  Startled, she looks up from her books.  Those who know where this office is know that they do not need to knock.  “Enter,” she calls out, her low voice showing no hint of her surprise.

A whipcord lean man with a neat mustache, who carries himself as if he hasn’t a care in the world, saunters into her office.  He eyes the bare walls curiously before seating himself lazily in one of the chairs in front of her desk.

“So have you considered my offer, Mr. Stark?” she asks casually, closing the ledgers and setting them to the side.

“Oh, that,” he says, waving a hand.  “Not why I’m here.”

“Then tell me, why are you here? And how did you get here?” Darcy asks calmly, fingers steepling under her chin as she leans back in her chair, silk stockings whispering quietly as she crosses her legs.

“How I got here isn’t important, the why is.  And the why is that I have something that belongs to you, _Mrs. Barnes_.”

The name lights a fire under skin, making the always-cool Darcy suddenly hot and uncomfortable in her chilly basement office.  She is struck off-balance, and her chair tips forward, causing Darcy to firmly plant her palms on her desk in order to not end up in the floor.

Howard Stark gives her a surprisingly kind smile.  “It took me a while to connect the dots, and I normally am good at that,” he says, his voice gentle.  “When you approached me with your offer, I knew I knew your face from somewhere - I just couldn’t place it.  I thought maybe that we had…” he paused delicately, and Darcy had calmed enough to arch a dark brow at him.  He grinned roguishly.  “But that obviously wasn’t it.  It wasn’t until I was in my vault, looking up something else for Pe- for a friend, that I found your picture, tacked to the inside of an Army footlocker.”

Darcy stills, knowing exactly which (risque) photo he is referring to.  “Name your price,” she says coldly.

He leans forward towards the desk, giving her an earnest look.  “I’m not here to blackmail you,” he says, scoffing.  “I’m here to return your husband’s things to you.  And, if you’d like, to give you the opportunity to meet some of his friends.”

Darcy stares across the desk at him, her cold control over her emotions starting to melt and drip away.  

“We get together every year we can to celebrate the birthdays of our commander and his second-in-command, to remember and honor the two good men we lost,” he says somberly.  “And today is Bucky’s birthday.”

_Bucky_.

The name rips through her, pain lancing through her body sharp enough that Darcy can taste the blood on her tongue from how hard she bites her lip.  “Bucky?” she keens, one hand almost unconsciously stroking the fine silver chain that peeks above the collar of her suit.

“He loved you very much,” Howard murmurs, and Darcy chokes back a sob.

She clenches the edge of the desk before slowly uncurling her fingers and rising.  The low light of the office catches the ring that she has refused to take off of her left hand, and she contemplates its sparkle for a moment.

(Never as bright as the sparkle in Bu- her husband’s eyes.)

“Very well, Mr. Stark,” she says resolutely.  

 

* * *

 

 

They stride into the Waldorf together, Howard laughing uproariously at a sly, off-color joke Darcy had just told, and heads turn at the sight of the cold _La Vedov_ a with a humorous half-grin on her face.  Her red, red lips curve up slightly, corners of her mouth barely touching the bottom of her signature veil, and the other patrons instinctively scoot back in their chairs, away from that dangerous smile.

Howard leads them to a table in a back corner where raucous laughter echoes out over the otherwise quiet dining room.  A man in a bowler hat is laughing uproariously while a dark-haired woman points her steak knife at him threateningly, a teasing smile gracing her red lips.  Five other men and another dark haired woman - her hair even wilder than Darcy’s natural curls - sit around the table.

“Everyone, this is Darcy Barnes,” Howard announces before plopping down next to the woman with the steak knife and stealing her tumbler of whiskey. He quickly rattles off the names of everyone at the table, and Darcy matches them with ones mentioned in her husband’s letters.

The man in the bowler lets out a long, slow whistle as Darcy settles herself a bit more gracefully in a chair than Howard did.  “Bucky wasn’t kidding when he said you were a looker,” he announced, his red cheeks clueing Darcy into his slightly inebriated state.

Darcy smiles at him, but it is not the sharp, dangerous smile that people are used to seeing from her.  It is something much softer and almost teasing.  “He wasn’t kidding when he said you had more balls than brains,” she replies, her ladylike tones contrasting with her crass words.

The table erupts in laughter, none louder than the man she has just insulted.  “I like you!” he exclaims, taking another long pull of whiskey from his glass.  “Now where the hell’s that waiter with my whiskey?”

Another man chimes in, telling the story of Bucky and Steve and their habit of winning whiskey and cigarettes from other battalions during poker games.  Her husband’s name is bandied across the table casually, and it starts to feel less like a strike to her senses and more like a gentle caress to her battered, withered heart.

The maitre’d brings a bottle of the finest limoncello to the table, compliments of the chef, and Darcy smiles as she pours icy cold glasses for everyone at the table.  “To Bucky,” she says, lifting her glass in a toast.

It is the first time she has said her husband’s name in twelve years, and it is the sweetest word her mouth has ever formed.

 

 


	31. miracle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Well, sort of. I've been tinkering on this story for a while. It's not all I wanted to write, but I liked the ending, so I left it there.
> 
> *NOTE: This story is being cross-posted into 'there are more things' because it is also a supernatural!Darcy story, and that's where all my fics like that reside. So if you are subscribed to both, you'll see an update for it too, but know it's the same thing as this chapter.

**Never put your faith in a Prince.  When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.**

**Catherynne M. Valente, In the Night Garden**

 

Steve, Natasha, T’Challa, Sam, Wanda, and two of the Wakandan healers who have worked with Bucky gather in a conference room in the Wakandan palace to discuss with Bucky his recovery progress. Recovery was going well, but they’ve hit a block in Bucky’s mind and even Wanda cannot find the last of his remaining triggers.

“It’ll take a miracle to find all those triggers,” Sam says, frustrated.

There is a commotion in the hallway outside the room, and then two petite women and an imposing blonde man burst into the conference room. Everyone at the table jumps up, pulling out their preferred weapons or taking their preferred combat stance.

Bucky’s eyes are drawn to one of the women. She is young, with wild dark hair and a messenger bag clutched closely to her chest. “I can help you,” she says, looking deep into Bucky’s eyes. There is a truth and sincerity deep in her voice, and it resonates with something inside Bucky.

“Okay,” he says simply.

Everyone puts their weapons away and warily returns to their seats. The man - Thor - and the two women - Jane and Darcy - introduce themselves to everyone gathered at the table.  Darcy and Jane take the two empty seats at their end of the table, and Thor takes up a relaxed position leaning against the door frame.  "We have come to help," Thor says.

“The women in my family have the Sight,” Darcy explains.

“That is not an easy gift to have,” Wanda murmurs sympathetically.

“No, it’s really not,” Darcy agrees. “Fortunately, our line has almost died out, so there are only a handful of us with the gift, and only a few of those in whom it is actually powerful.”

“So...wait. You can see the future?” Sam asks.

“Not exactly. The women in my family can see the possibilities. The future is constantly changing, and very few things are set in stone.”

“Ah, the _ukubona_ ,” T’Challa says. “There are a few women here who have that gift as well.”

“Well….” Darcy hesitates. “My gift is a little different. My great-great grandmother, may she stay where we put her, took the Left-Hand Path. Ever since, my line’s gift has been a bit...reversed.”  Wanda makes a small, shocked sound, while everyone else just looks confused. “Basically, I can see into the past,” Darcy says quickly, hoping that no one asks any difficult questions. “I can look into a Dark Mirror and see every moment of a person’s past.”

* * *

  Bucky watches Darcy explain her family’s heritage to the table. The tale is fantastical, but she shows none of the signs that she is lying. Her voice is hesitant, but not out of doubt in what she is saying - more out of fear that the others might think she is crazy.

She turns to Bucky, and looks him directly in the eyes. “I can See everything that has been done to you,” she says quietly. “Every coding, every trigger, every freeze, every bit of pain and suffering and misery that you have felt because of what you have endured.”

Her phrasing is odd. “Don’t you mean the pain and suffering I have caused?” he asks her, curious.

“Everyone causes pain and suffering in their lives, if only just a small amount. But not everyone suffers, and very few have suffered like you have,” she replies.

“How do you know? How can you tell?” he asks her, voice barely a whisper, as he looks down at the table.

“Such is the nature of my Path. I know pain and suffering better than most,” she says, sliding one hand forward towards his. Her sleeve rides up her arm, and Bucky can see the myriad of scars that criss-cross up and down the underside of her arm. None of the wounds would have killed her, but to scar that deeply Bucky knows that they would have hurt. “Let me See you,” she says, wrapping her hand around his metal wrist.

Bucky peers up at her through his hair. She has a look in her eyes that tells him that she has seen terror, and fear, and pain, and heartbreak, and misery, and all the worst the world has to offer - but she does not see those things here.

It’s not pity, but it is understanding.

“Okay,” he says, yet again. “Take a look.” 

* * *

With Bucky’s agreement, Darcy carefully unpacks the items in her bag. A bolt of ruby red silk is unfurled over the tabletop. She pulls out on obsidian blade, roughly four inches long and wickedly sharp, and places it in a precise spot on the right side of the silk. A tablet and stylus follow, placed to the left. Finally, she pulls a black drawstring bag out. It is covered in runes and symbols that are even older than Thor, embroidered in a silvery thread that seems to shift colors under the bright halogen lights.

Darcy carefully reaches into the drawstring bag and removes a small, framed mirror. Gems sparkle on its back, and a frisson of power sparks through the room. Everyone but Darcy shifts in their seats or peeks over their shoulder, looking for the ghost they suddenly felt walk over their grave. Darcy places the mirror face down on the silk and taps a fingernail three times against the back. The small noise seems to echo through the conference room, and everyone quiets and turns their attention to her. “Before I do this, we must go over some rules,” she says, her voice low. “No one else is to touch me, no matter what happens. No one is to attempt to break the connection between Bucky and I. And no one is to ever, ever, look into the mirror but me. Am I clear?” she asks, arching an eyebrow at the collection of people around the table. All nod, or make some noise of agreement.

She turns to look at Thor, standing in the doorway behind her. “I need a tether,” she says.

Thor gives her a sheepish smile. “I am afraid I was never quite good at those lessons with my mother,” he says quietly. “I have often wished I paid more attention, now.”

Darcy smiles gently at him. “You did quite well when we practiced earlier.”

Thor nods, and a rarely-seen unsure look crosses his face. He starts chanting under his breath, hands moving in slow circles around each other. A small spark of silver flies from his hands to Darcy, and she nods encouragingly. Thor continues chanting, and more sparks fly, weaving together into a rope that extends from his hands into Darcy’s body.

After a few minutes, Darcy speaks an old Akkadian word that reverberates through the room, rumbling somewhere deep inside everyone’s chest. She tugs on the silvery rope Thor has created and then smiles, pleased. She says something in a different language, long dead, that makes Thor laugh, and then returns to her seat at the head of the table. “Shall we begin?”

She turns and faces Bucky, who is sitting to her left. “I need you to make physical contact with me. Skin to skin,” she says. Bucky slowly reaches out and places his right hand on her left arm, but Darcy shakes her head at him. “I’m a lefty,” she says, moving her left hand in a writing motion. “I’m afraid I might dislodge you. Here,” she says, twisting her hair up into a knot. “The back of my neck.”

Bucky scoots forward and carefully grips the back of her neck. His thumb rests at the hinge of her jaw, right below her left ear, while his fingers curl around to rest against the pulse he can feel beating steadily in her throat. She stares at him, and for a moment her eyes seem fathomless. “Do not look into the mirror,” she reminds him as she starts to flip it over. Bucky nods quickly, once, and then shifts his gaze to a point on the wall behind her.

Darcy exhales slowly, centering herself as she picks up the knife. With a quick, practiced movement, she slices the palm of her right hand open. Blood wells from the cut, rolling over the palm of her hand and slowly trickling down her arm. She sets down the knife and picks up the stylus to her tablet. She rests the stylus in her left hand against her tablet, and with a deep, shuddery, breath, places her bloody right hand against the Dark Mirror. Her head tilts back, and the knot of her hair brushes lightly against where Bucky’s flesh hand is resting against the nape of her neck. When she tilts her head back forward, her eyes are solid black as they look down to stare deep into the mirror. 

* * *

An invisible, preternaturally cold wind whips through the conference room from out of nowhere. Bucky shivers, but he does not loosen his grip. He counts the beat of her pulse underneath her fingers, and-1, and-2, and-3, as a chill seems to overtake the room. Ice creeps out of the mirror and crawls slowly up Darcy’s arm, turning every inch of her an eerie, frosty blue. Darcy’s skin turns to ice beneath his hand, and her heartbeat slows until it is almost imperceptible.

Bucky feels Darcy’s arm move, and chances a glance down. She is rapidly writing on her tablet, stylus flying right to left in a strange alphabet that Bucky does not recognize. He looks around the table to see confused faces that match his own.

Then suddenly, the ice retreats back into the mirror. Her pulse rate picks back up. Darcy’s body starts to thrash in her seat, but Bucky is amazed to see that her left hand is still writing steadily and her right is still pressed flat against the mirror. Her movements grow wilder, and Bucky can hear a distressed noise come from Doctor Foster, who sits on Darcy’s other side.

Suddenly, the movements stop. Darcy’s body goes perfectly still, and she utters a phrase in Russian that Bucky is intimately, terribly familiar with. Bucky can feel Steve turn worried eyes toward him, but surprisingly, Bucky is unaffected. He looks at Steve and shrugs, confused.

Darcy goes through the same series of movements several times, though each instance lasts a different amount of time. She freezes, ice wrapping around her body from the mirror, and then thaws and thrashes. She speaks in Russian, and then stills until the ice starts to wrap up her body again. Freeze, thaw, repeat.

“D’ya think that’s how many times you’ve been put in cryo?” Steve quietly asks Bucky. Bucky shrugs, careful not to dislodge his grip on Darcy’s neck.

Suddenly, Darcy jerks under Bucky’s grip, and it’s all he can do to hold on as she arches her back and screams. Steve gasps, and Bucky looks over to him. Shakily, Steve points to Darcy’s left arm. Bucky looks back at it and inhales sharply. Blood is running in rivulets down her left arm, staining the sleeve of her shirt and dripping onto the table.

Darcy is still screaming - one long, sustained note that echoes around the room, burying itself under Bucky’s skin and making his bones rattle. Tears are rolling down Darcy’s face, and Bucky can see where Doctor Foster is reaching out to touch Darcy.

“Do not, my love,” Thor says quietly from where he his still standing behind Darcy, holding the silver rope. Doctor Foster pulls her hand back as if scorched and holds it in her lap.

Darcy stops screaming, and the silence echoes around the room. She slumps forward, and Bucky leans in to keep his grip on her neck. He can hear Darcy muttering numbers under her breath, and it takes him a moment to recognize his own serial number from his Army days. She’s reciting it like a litany, and then suddenly, she sits up and looks at Steve. “Steve,” she sighs his name like a prayer. Steve jumps in his seat. “I thought you were smaller?” she croaks out, voice hoarse from screaming.

Bucky and Steve exchange surprised looks. Bucky had forgotten until just now his reaction to seeing Steve’s new and Stark-improved body. Steve gives Bucky a tentative smile, and Bucky fondly shakes his head.

Darcy slumps back in her chair, and Bucky echoes her movement. For a stretch of time, Darcy says nothing, and the only movement she makes is the continual motion of writing on her tablet. Finally, she lets out a small, soft, sigh. She smiles contentedly and closes her eyes, humming a lullaby that Bucky barely remembers from his childhood.

A gust of summer wind blows the conference room, warm and smelling of wildflowers. Darcy opens her eyes, and Bucky can see that they have returned to their normal blue. She turns and looks at him, leaning into his grip on her neck. “You are a good man, James Buchanan Barnes,” she says quietly, staring deep into his eyes. “You were not meant to walk my Path.” She pats his hand on her neck and then stands, effectively breaking their connection. 

* * *

Darcy stands and stretches, trying to work out the phantom ache in her left shoulder and the lingering chill deep in her bones. Walking in someone else’s memories is never an easy thing. Bucky’s is not the most difficult past she’s walked in, but it came rather close at points. She glances at Thor over her shoulder, and he carefully breaks the tether between them, calling his own weak magic back in from her body.

Darcy glances down at her tablet. “Enochian?” she remarks, mostly to herself. Her notes on her uses of the Dark Mirror are always in some dead language - people’s secrets deserve to be kept, and that’s the best way Darcy knows how. However, she only uses Enochian when there is some sort of dark magic involved.

Darcy idly scrolls through her tablet, making mental notes on which sections to translate first and which to try and forget.

“So, what can you tell us?” Steve asks in a commanding tone.

“Nothing, yet,” Darcy answers absentmindedly, still scrolling through her notes. Bucky’s past is much longer than she anticipated, so there are many memories to sift through in order to find all of the triggers.

“Well then what use are you?” Steve spits out, frustration lacing his every word.

Thor and Jane both make displeased sounds, but Darcy just looks up at the captain and smiles slowly.

It is not a nice smile.

It is a predatory smile, such as the one Red Room operatives are taught to give to their victims as they trap them in a web of deception and slowly prowl in for the final death blow.

It is a beguiling smile, such as the one a lounge singer might give two impressionable teenage boys from Brooklyn as she finishes up her song, before gesturing to the bouncers to throw them out.

It’s a smile that Bucky recognizes.

“You are more than welcome to my notes,” Darcy says politely, sliding the tablet down the table towards him.

Steve catches the tablet and scrolls through it. “This...isn’t English,” he says, confused.

“Nope,” she says, popping the last syllable on the word as she starts to pack everything back up. The Dark Mirror is carefully put back in its bag, her knife is sheathed behind her back, and the silk is rolled back up.

“How do you even read this?” Steve mutters.

“From right to left,” Darcy supplies in her most helpful tones. Jane snorts and Darcy winks at her conspiratorially.

Wanda idles over and reads Darcy’s tablet over Steve’s shoulder. “Oh, this part should be useful,” she comments. “May I?” she asks Darcy.

Darcy tosses the stylus to Wanda. “Be my guest.”

Wanda catches the stylus and scribbles a few quick notes on the tablet. Once she is done, she slides the tablet and stylus back down the table to Darcy, who quickly packs them up in her bag.

“You asked for a miracle,” Darcy says to Steve. “Miracles take time, but trust me, I’ll deliver.”

Darcy and Wanda exchange a long look, one witch to another. “There is nothing so horrifying as a miracle,” Wanda says quietly, in one of the Old Languages.

“No, there really isn’t,” Darcy agrees in the same language. Miracles require magic, and magic always requires blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATE: Since several people have asked, there is a sequel to this chapter! It is in 'there are more things' - chapter 11.


	32. grinned (bucky/darcy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I started writing this one in light of the Hydra!Cap debacle, and it's been gathering dust in my folder for a while since then. So I cleaned it up a bit, and posted it as-is. Hope you like it!

**“No wonder the man never grinned. He would have posed a serious danger to womankind if he did so more than once a decade.”**

**_Proof by Seduction_ ** **, Courtney Milan**

 

After her adventures in New Mexico and London with Jane, Darcy decides that advanced degrees are not as unappealing as she once thought they were.  The real world is even more terrifying than she once thought it was, and the job market is absolute shit to boot, so Darcy retreats back into the ivory tower of academia.

Two years after Weird Elves of London™, she graduates with a Master’s in Mass Communication from a university in London.  Jane had let Darcy live with her in London, under the condition that Darcy still perform her intern duties.

After that, Darcy returns stateside to get a PhD in Media and Public Affairs.  Three years later, she has another shiny degree to collect dust in the back of her closet.  

Jane flies in from wherever she’s currently studying and she and Darcy get shitty, white-girl wasted drinking boxed wine and watching Star Trek to celebrate that fact that they are now both doctors.  Thor eventually joins them from his not-so-secret base in upstate New York.  He starts reciting some epic tale of advanced learning in Asgard, but Darcy drunkenly interrupts him with a “Dammit, Thor, I’m a doctor, not a poet!”  Jane laughs so hard that she falls off the couch in Darcy’s living room.

 

Three months later, Darcy is seriously considering taking the offer of a tenure-track position at some two-bit college in Montana when she gets a call from an unknown number with a New York area code.

It’s Steve Rogers, offering her a job as the PR specialist for the Avengers.  

Who says no to Captain America?

However, the offer does come with some caveats: she’s basically responsible for fixing the public image of the Avengers after the disaster that was the Sokovia Accords.  It’s been a year, and the Avengers as a group have mostly reconciled, but the world still sees them more as a ticking time bomb of worldwide destruction rather than the peacekeeping unit they can (and should) be.

She’s not Olivia Pope, but she is Darcy (fucking) Lewis, and she is bound and determined to succeed.

  
  


The first few months are...rough, to say the least.  The Captain and Falcon (call me Sam) are constantly traveling back and forth between Wakanda as they check in on Bucky’s rehabilitation progress, so Darcy barely does more than introduce herself before Captain Rogers throws her into the shark-infested waters of the Avengers compound.  

Fortunately, she knows two of the Avengers already.  Thor has to return to Asgard, but Clint is helpful - in his own pesky, Clint-like fashion - in introducing her to the team.  However, the team is not very interested in meeting her. 

But still, Darcy perseveres. For six months, she makes true efforts to not only get to know all of these superheroes as people, but also to become their friend.  To her surprise, it mostly works - and she finds that she really does like most of these crazy superpowered people.

(Except Clint. Fuck Clint. He stole her last of the original formula Dublin Dr. Peppers and that is a sin that Darcy, as a red-blooded Texan, cannot abide.)

  
  
  


Darcy sets up two types of social media accounts for the Avengers.  The first set is a verified, sanitized, properly-PR-worded grouping of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.  The posts are usually short but informative, and serve to highlight the good the Avengers are doing.  They often include photos of the team helping with cleanup and relief efforts after big battles, or any volunteer work they do during down time.  (The photo of Thor visiting a children’s cancer ward and letting all the kids braid his hair still holds the record for the most likes and shares out of any post she’s done.)

The second set...is a little dicier.  She hasn’t really mentioned it to the Captain that she’s running these, because she’s afraid of his reaction.  It’s a funny, sometimes profane, and often sarcastic set of Tumblr, Instagram, and Snapchat pages.  She shares the Avengers doing normal, mundane, or even weird embarrassing stuff on these accounts - but always, of course, with their permission.  She shares behind-the-scenes stories on Tumblr, like one about the time Scott and Clint played leftover Russian roulette with all the questionable takeout containers in the communal fridge and were both in the infirmary with food poisoning for 48 hours.  Her weekly #BitchesGetStuffDone posts on Instagram, where she highlights all the efforts (and ass-kicking) of the women on staff often trended.  (The mastercut of Hope van Dyne punching Scott in the face during every training session was still one of her personal favorites, just because Hope looks so damned bored during every one.)  And her Snapchat series of Capture the Flag, Avengers style (which was incredibly cut throat), literally blew up the Internet and caused even major news outlets to pick up the story.  (Fox News thought it was a waste of their time and resources. Darcy was so proud.)

 

Six months after her hire date, Captain Rogers and Sam Wilson return from Wakanda with a quiet, long-haired man in tow.  Darcy barely registers the third man as she stalks over to the Captain, hoping to corral him into a much-needed meeting about interviews and media strategies before he hares off around the globe again.

Her beautiful new Louboutin heels (a bribe from Tony to get in on the latest Snapchat) make a satisfying clicking noise as she strides across the cafeteria towards Rogers and Wilson.  Before they can do much more than greet her, Darcy has tugged the sash off her trench coat and threaded it through both Rogers’ and Wilson’s belt loops.  Using it as a leash, she tugs both men into following her towards her office.

The third man just stands there, watching her, with a confused expression across his face, so Darcy reaches out and grabs him with her free hand, tugging him along with them.  His arm is cool and metal under hand, and Darcy briefly tightens her grip on it, before sliding her hand down and wrapping her fingers around his.  “Listen up, ya hooligans,” she says in a mock-reprimanding tone.  “I have about six pages worth of notes I need to go over with you before you go running off to Nigeria or the Netherlands or wherever.”

The Captain makes some vague protesting noises as Darcy herds them all into her office.  He and Sam take seats in the chairs in front of her desk, while the third man sits nervously on her couch on the far wall.

“Miss Lewis, I don’t think this is the best time.  We’ve received reports of a Leviathan cell reactivating in Belarus....”

“Captain Rogers,” Darcy interrupts him as she sits behind her desk. “Either you take an hour to go over preliminary interview schedules and press releases, or I let my hacker buddy release your sexts to TMZ. Your choice,” she says matter-of-factly as she resists the urge to steeple her fingers in front of her like a cheesy movie villain.  “And please, call me Darcy.”

“You- what- how?” he sputters.

Darcy shrugs modestly.  “I know people.”

“You’re bluffing,” he says mulishly, squaring his jaw.

Darcy pulls a slim folder from her desk drawer and passes it to him.  “That sounds like a rather...creative use for your paints,” she says delicately.  The Captain’s ears turn bright red as he tries to shove the folder under his leg, while Sam tries to steal it from him.

As they fuss over the folder, Darcy turns to the third man sitting on her couch.  “I’m sorry to drag you into this, Sergeant Barnes, but if you’re going to be involved in the Avengers Initiative, I need to be briefed on what you are and are not comfortable sharing with the public.”

He gives her a blank stare.  “I’m sorry, but who are you?” he asks gruffly.

She smiles graciously at him.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t think to introduce myself! My name is Darcy Lewis.  I handle the public relations for the team.  Newspaper and magazine articles, interviews, social media...that sort of thing.  Speaking of…” she said, turning back to the bickering pair in front of her desk, “we have team interviews to schedule.”

 

Hammering out a press plan with Captain ‘Call-me-Steve’ Rogers took a lot longer than Darcy expected, so Darcy took pity on the three men in her office and sent Wanda out to pick up pizzas for them.  (Darcy had taken it on herself to make sure that Wanda knew she was free to leave the compound, if she wanted.  She often sent the younger woman on nonsense errands in town just so she could taste that little bit of freedom they offered her.  Freedom tastes so much sweeter when you’ve had it taken away - something Darcy knows all too well from her time with Jane in Norway.)  

Throughout all of the discussion.  Sergeant Barnes had kept a blank, unsmiling look on his face, and it was starting to make Darcy uncomfortable.  Even the arrival of steaming hot, perfectly gooey pizza did nothing to break his non-expression.  When Clint tumbled in through her air vent to steal a slice of pizza, and Darcy threatened to Tase him, all Barnes did was raise an eyebrow at their antics.

“I don’t see why we have to do all this press. Makes me feel like a dancing monkey again,” Steve grouses after they clean up their lunch mess and return to the discussion of interviews.

“People need to see you as people,” Darcy says forcefully.  “They need to see that at the end of the day, you take off your work clothes, prop your feet up, pop a top on a beer and watch shitty TV shows just like they do.  They need to see the human side of superhuman - the lows and the highs, the sadness and despair when a mission doesn’t go as planned and the joy and happiness when it does.  They need to see the price you pay to keep them safe.” 

Darcy pauses and collects her thoughts.  “Did you know that the weekly rehab progress updates that Colonel Rhodes did are some of our most viewed videos? We had veterans contacting us from all over the world, commiserating with Rhodes and sharing tips and tricks that they had learned in their own rehab sessions.  We were able to help start an online community for disabled veterans where they could talk openly with people who understand what they are going through because they, too, are going through the same things.  We’ve even been able to fund further rehab for some of those veterans who were booted out of the system too soon.”

“So yes, the interviews do matter.  The videos and photos I share do matter.  The hospital visits where Thor plays dress up with children in the cancer ward matter. Wanda celebrating her 21st birthday with friends matters. Natasha and Misty Copeland interviewing each other for  _ Glamour  _ does matter. You, Steve Rogers, matter - much more than Captain America. And people need to see that.  Anyone could have been given that title, or worn your suit.  It’s because you, Steve Rogers, do it, that Captain America actually means something to people.”

Darcy takes a moment to calm herself down after that impassioned speech.  She hadn’t meant to get up on her soapbox, but she finds that she doesn’t feel all that bad about she said.  Steve needs to know that they, the people behind the suits, mean more to her than just her job.  They’re her fascinating, crazy,  _ human _ , friends, and she just wants the world to see them that way.

“Okay,” Steve says quietly after a moment.  “What interviews do I need to do?” he asks begrudgingly.

  
  
  


They hash out a tentative interview schedule for all of the Avengers by supper, so Darcy follows the three men back to the cafeteria.  

Sam sidles up next to her as they are walking back, Steve and Barnes some distance ahead of them.  “So…” he says casually, “are you the one running the ‘Secret Avengers’ Instagram account?”

Darcy flicks a wary glance towards Steve in front of them.  “Let’s just say I hypothetically am,” she says cagily.  “What about it?”

Sam surreptitiously slides his phone from his back pocket.  “I might have some material for it,” he says, unlocking the screen and pulling up the videos.  “I might,” he says, equally cagey, “have introduced Steve to  _ Leverage _ , and convinced him to sing the ‘two good ole boys in Lucille’ song while we were driving across Europe.”

“Noooo,” Darcy gasps delightedly.  

“Oh yes,” Sam says, tapping on the video to start it.

Much to Darcy’s delight, Sam and Steve are even mimicking Hardison and Eliot in their actions.  Sam is messing with Redwing when the video starts, and Steve has a ball cap backwards on his head.  Sam starts singing the song but Steve, bless his heart, Steve sells it.  He’s hitting the falsetto and fist pumping and moving his shoulders side to side as they sing.  

The song ends, and the video pans back to Barnes, squeezed in the back seat of the tiny Beetle, with an absolutely  _ disgusted  _ look on his face.  Darcy laughs so hard tears nearly come to her eyes.  “You’ve got to send that to me,” she says between laughs.

Sam winks at her conspiratorially.  “Man, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Darcy rubs her hands together greedily.  “Sam, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Darcy looks up from Sam’s phone to see Steve and Barnes looking back at them with matching unimpressed expressions.  She and Sam start laughing all over again.

  
  
  


The Avengers are called out for another mission, so Darcy spends the time they are away hammering out a final schedule for interviews and figuring out who to pair together for the interviews.  (She’s learned that the buddy system will help keep everyone on track and away from potentially dangerous topics.)

Once they get back, though, she puts her tightly coordinated, color coded schedule into play. At least two interviews or public appearances happen per week, though it’s usually closer to four or five.  Every member of the team is required to spend at least four hours with Darcy doing interview training before they are allowed to do interviews.  Only Steve and Natasha are allowed to do interviews on their own - everyone else has to be paired up. She pairs Clint with Wanda for a few interviews, because Wanda is the most comfortable around him.  Hope and Natasha will be together for an interview with a newscaster that Darcy knows is incredibly sexist, and Darcy cannot wait to see them drag that poor man.  Scott and Clint get put together to do a story hour, because they both have kids and are comfortable around munchkins (plus Scott does great voices).  Natasha and Steve are slated to do a few interviews together - they seem to be genuine friends, and Steve loves to field all the catsuit questions Natasha gets.  Rhodey even agrees to do a photoshoot with Sam and the few Tuskegee Airmen still alive.

Surprisingly, Barnes even agrees to do a few interviews, provided that Steve is there with him.  Darcy agrees to his stipulation, and schedules the two with Stephen Colbert, who she is pretty sure will a) lose his shit over having the two of them on his show, and b) keep his questions generally away from sensitive topics.

  
Darcy, of course, records all of the aired interviews, and tries to be at most of the tapings.  But some strange scheduling snafu forces her to miss the two super soldiers taping Colbert, and is forced to watch the airing like the rest of the world.

And holy shit, it is a  _ disaster. _

Darcy gapes at the screen in shock.  Somehow, they’re discussing the new issue of the Captain America comic that claims that Cap is a Nazi/Hydra agent - a topic which Darcy knew nothing about.  Steve is going off on poor Colbert, who mostly looks terrified, and Barnes has an honest-to-God murder stare aimed straight at the camera.

Then, to make matters worse, Barnes pulls out a knife and starts idly flipping it around his knuckles.  The show quickly cuts to commercial, and Darcy is too busing staring at the tv screen to even register how her phone is blowing up.

Darcy takes a moment to process everything.  Someone out there is claiming that Captain America - Steve Rogers - is a Nazi.  The idea is ludicrous, and goes against everything that Steve Rogers fundamentally is.  Darcy needs to get a handle on this situation - and fast.

  
  
  


Darcy spends the next thirty hours after the disastrous Colbert interview doing research.  She calls her hacker buddy - the one who got Steve’s sexts for her - and has him trace publishing money on that atrocious comic.  She and Pepper coordinate with SI’s legal team for a libel suit against the writers, inkers, illustrators and publishing company that produced the comic.  Darcy spends a good hour on the phone with Stephen Colbert, trying to smooth everything over.  Surprisingly, Colbert agrees that the whole thing is a dirty lie, and actually helps get her hashtag campaign to counteract the issue off the ground.  Darcy is alternating between writing a scathing press release and tracking the media’s responses to both the comic and the interview.

Wanda sneaks into Darcy’s office around four in the morning, bringing the scents of strong coffee and fresh baked challah with her.  She deposits a giant carafe of coffee and half a loaf of bread on Darcy’s desk, and Darcy waves her thanks at her as she wraps up a phone call with Sal Goldstein, the lead SI legal partner heading up their libel suit.

Wanda munches thoughtfully on the other half of the loaf of challah.  “Did they think that they could get away with it?” she asks after a sip of coffee.  “After all Steve has done...after what he nearly died trying to do?”

Darcy sighs and drops into her desk chair.  “Objectively speaking, it creates an interesting narrative.  If Steve was Hydra all along, they could argue that Barnes willingly became a Hydra tool in order to stay with Steve, which means he could be prosecuted for war crimes. Or they can use Steve’s supposed Hydra ties to give legitimacy to their organization.  The greater good and all that. Or…”

“Do you always think so far down the line?” Wanda interrupts.

Darcy pours herself a cup of coffee and shrugs.  “It’s what they pay me to do.  Put out the fires before they can even light a match.”  She tears off a piece of challah and picks at it.

“It is a terrible weight on Steve’s heart, knowing that people are believing that about him.  I can feel the sadness pouring off of him,” Wanda remarks.

Darcy pushes her glasses up on her forehead and pinches the bridge of her nose.  “You can be damn sure that the timing was not a coincidence.  Someone made sure that that comic was published on the same day Steve was slated to be on Colbert - which was kept strictly need to know.  So how did they know?”

“I bet Ross had something to do with this,” Wanda says, spitting out the general’s name like the most terrible of curses.

An idea forms in Darcy’s mind.  “How would you like to do a little undercover work for me?” she asks the other woman.

Wanda leans forward.  “What did you have in mind?”

Darcy steeples her fingers on her desk.  “I think that you and Natasha should talk to this writer.  See what you can find out. Then go see what you can pick up from Ross’s head.”

Wanda smiles, and the dangerous power she is capable of peeks out from behind her eyes.  “I’ll have Clint warm up the Quinjet.”

“Have fun storming the castle!” Darcy calls out as the other woman flits from the room.

An email from This Day in History pops up in her inbox - and the headline gives Darcy another idea.  She pages for Steve, and while she waits on him, she places a phone call to an untraceable number.

“Carter,” the woman’s voice on the other end answers after the third ring.

“Did you watch Colbert last night?” Darcy asks, skipping the pleasantries.

“Oh yeah.  Who started this shitshow?” Sharon Carter asks.

“No idea yet, but my money is on Ross,” Darcy answers.

“He does like his smear campaigns,” Sharon muses.  “Who do I need to punch?”

“Sharon, this is why you are my favorite. You are always on my wavelength,” Darcy says delightedly.  “No violence, yet.  Feel like playing paparazzo?”  Darcy explains her plan to Sharon, who agrees to be in DC in four hours.

About the time that Darcy hangs up on Sharon, a sleepy Steve appears in her office, followed by his ever-present shadow of Bucky Barnes.  Darcy waves a hand at the coffee as she fields another call from a reporter asking for a statement.  “Captain Rogers will release a statement later in the morning.  I assure you, Christine, you will be one of the first to get it,” Darcy says before hanging up the phone.

Steve starts to say something, but Darcy cuts him off with a finger.  “I’m not mad at you, Steve,” she says, smiling tiredly at him.  “This was a media set up, and none of it is your fault.  And fortunately, I have some ideas on how to strike back.”  She outlines her plan for Steve to tour the U.S. Holocaust Museum and quietly donate funds to the organization.  Darcy explains how Sharon will be tailing him, taking photos, and how those photos and information about his donation would be ‘leaked’ to the press.

“...but mostly, I just want you to experience the museum.  It’s a moving experience, and worthy of remembrance - especially since today is the anniversary of the news of murder vans in Chelmno breaking.  The media blitz is secondary,” Darcy explains quietly, fingers worrying at the necklace around her throat.

“Could...could Wanda maybe go with me?” Steve suggests around a yawn.

“I have her running an errand for me, but I’ll see if she can meet you there.”

“Her grandfather was held in a concentration camp,” Steve explains.

Darcy nods.  “Same one my great-great-aunt was in, actually,” she adds.  “Wanda’s grandfather survived, but Miriam was not as lucky.  She’s something of a legacy in my family - I’m actually named after her,” Darcy says quietly.  She picks up a framed picture on her desk and studies it.  “She helped smuggle information to the French Resistance.  She was the same age I am now when she died.”

Darcy wasn’t aware she was crying until a white handkerchief appeared under her gaze.  Grateful, she took it, only belatedly noticing the metal hand it was held in.  “Thank you,” she murmured, giving Bucky are grateful look.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Bucky said gravely as he sat back down.

Darcy takes a deep breath to steady herself.  “Miriam kept extensive journals during her lifetime, and my family donated them to the Holocaust Museum several years ago.  You’ll have to ask the curator if you can see them,” she suggests to Steve.  “If not, and you’re interested, my grandparents have copies.”

“I’ll do that,” Steve says.  

“Okay then, go get showered and dressed.  Quinjet leaves in an hour,” Darcy says, strengthening her voice.

Bucky goes to follow Steve out of her office, but Darcy calls after him.  “Uh-huh, Barnes.  You and me gotta have a talk about proper interview behavior,” she chides.  “You’re staying.”

Bucky and Steve share a wordless conversation, and after an arch of Steve’s eyebrow, Bucky slinks back in her office.

  
  
Darcy spends the rest of the morning going over interview strategies with Bucky.  After several futile arguments against carrying weapons, Darcy finally throws up her hands.  “I swear to God, Barnes, I will personally pat you down for weapons before every damn interview, if that’s what it takes,” she growls.

A flirtatious smile crosses his face.  “Promise?” he asks, his voice low and slightly dangerous.

It takes Darcy a few minutes to hide her shock at the first not-cranky expression she’s seen on Bucky’s face.  She quickly glances at the ground, if only to make sure her panties have not literally dropped to the ground in the wake of that smile.  “That!” she finally manages to shakily say.  “That is the kind of expression you need when on camera. Not a murder glare.  So if I have to personally search you like I’m a TSA agent before every interview, I guess I’ll work it into my schedule,” she jokes.

“Okay,” he says with a little shrug, still grinning.

“Okay,” Darcy repeats, still a little dazed.

  
  
Darcy’s plans work out perfectly.  Natasha comes back with some very interesting information about the relationship between a certain comic writer and a certain general.  Wanda manages to meet up with Steve, and the two of them tour the Holocaust Museum together.  Wanda sends her a few brief texts about the experience - mostly things along the lines of she was learning more than she’d even known about the event.

The media has a heyday with the photographs - especially since they hit the news around the same time as the libel suit is filed.  Darcy makes a note to send Sharon an ammo-and-chocolate basket in supreme gratitude while answering calls from news agencies and making sure everyone got a copy of the press statement.

When Steve gets back, he tells her the Colbert has called him, wanting to do a make up interview the next evening to apologize for the last one that got cut short.  Bucky wants to do the interview with Steve, so Darcy clears out her schedule so she can be on site for this one.

She spends that afternoon of the interview going over interview skills with Steve and Bucky.  Natasha is also there, and about half of the time she even offers helpful tips on directing the flow of conversation towards topics they want to discuss.  (The other half of the time is spent making faces behind where the men are sitting, so it’s all Darcy can do not to bust out laughing while mock-interviewing Steve and Bucky.)

Happy drives Steve, Bucky, and Darcy into the city, and Darcy spends the drive reviewing the latest social media posts about #SayNoToHydraCap while Steve and Bucky talk quietly amongst themselves.  Overall, the posts using the hashtag are incredibly positive - but there are a few naysayers and trolls still amongst them.  Darcy blocks users where needed, and retweets a handful of positive posts to the official Avengers account.

As they pull up to the studio, Darcy tucks her tablet back into her bag and turns to the two super soldiers.  “Now remember, boys, smile and wave.  Sign a few autographs if you feel like it, but other than that keep a steady clip for the door.  And smile!” she repeats one last time, giving Bucky and arch look.

Bucky gives her another panty-melting grin, and it’s all Darcy can do not to fan herself.  She’s not really sure why HYDRA covered his mouth with a mask, because that smile is downright lethal.   
  
  
  
  



	33. wish (darcy/steve)

**It is a very powerful thing when someone sees you as the person you wish you were.**

**Jennifer Graham and Rob Thomas,** **The Thousand Dollar Tan Line**

 

Steve leaned back against the far corner of the bar and people watched.  The costumes at the party ran the gamut: from sexy Avenger (the Captain America one made him shudder briefly) to what looked like a man wearing adult sized footie pajamas with a dragon tail.

He spotted Thor, head above most of the crowd, talking to two women.  One was wearing a crude, handmade cardboard sign that proclaimed NUDIST ON STRIKE, while the other was hidden partially behind Thor’s bulk, made even wider by the sweep of his ceremonial cape.

Thor and the so-called nudist moved off, and Steve had his first full look at the second woman.  She wore a long black dress, with a fitted waist and full skirts.  The inky dark of the fabric made her pale skin gleam in the low light of the room.

Her shoulders moved in a wistful little sigh, and then she leaned back against the table behind her, resting a hip and curling her fingers against its edge.  For a long moment, she stared after Thor and the other woman.

Suddenly, Steve realized exactly who she was dressed up as - and he would wager money that very few, if any, other people at the party would recognize it.  And knowing that, he knew he had to meet this mysterious Madame X.  


* * *

 

Darcy watched Thor and Jane meander through the crowd, noting the way that Thor automatically shortened his gargantuan stride to match her much smaller steps.  Jane unconsciously drifted closer to his side, and Darcy saw him give Jane a fond, loving look.

Briefly, a pang of jealousy flared inside Darcy.  She wanted someone to look at her and see only the best parts of herself, not the worst or the weakest.  Her parents only saw their flaky middle child, who wasted all those years and dollars on a degree only to quit right before graduation and run off to follow an astrophysicist.  Ian had only ever seen her as easy access to Jane’s work, never accounting for the fact that she wouldn’t be so fuck-struck as not to notice him stealing Jane’s data. And don’t even get her started on the number of men (and women - internalized misogyny is real, Virginia) who saw the breasts and hips and assumed that she was stupid or slutty or some combination thereof.

Darcy forced herself to straighten out of her slump and shake off her melancholy.  It was her favorite holiday of the year, she had an amazingly clever costume, and she was showing it off at _Tony Stark’s penthouse bash_ of all places.  Smiling to herself, she picked up her skirts and followed after Jane and Thor.

 

 

“Captain! Come, meet my dearest of comrades,” Thor called out to someone at the bar as Darcy rejoined him and Jane.  A blonde man, nearly as tall as Thor and dressed as a World War I aviator, pushed off of the bar and squeezed through the crowd to join them.

“Captain Rogers, may I introduce my dearest Doctor Jane Foster, and her most fearsome guardian Miss Darcy Lewis?” Thor said formally, motioning to each of the women.

“Doctor Foster,” the Captain said graciously as he shook Jane’s hand.  Darcy stifled a giggle at the sight of Jane’s tiny hand in his much larger one.  “Dr. Banner speaks highly of your research.”

Jane laughed.  “Well, we Culver crackpots have to stick together,” she said as she released his hand.

He turned to Darcy then, and simply stared at her, seemingly drinking her in.  Darcy felt odd under the intensity of Captain Rogers’ gaze.  Not uncomfortable, necessarily, but she was suddenly aware of a frisson of sexual attraction, lumbering to life under her skin.  His bright blue eyes seemed to catalog every small detail of her being: the jeweled crescent moon pinned in her hair, which was piled somewhat haphazardly on top of her head; the small rustling noise her silk skirts made as she shifted under his leisurely perusal; and the way one of the glimmering jeweled straps of her dress was starting to slowly but surely slide down her shoulder.  

Judging from the heat smoldering in his gaze, Darcy wasn’t alone in her lust.

Giving the Captain her most enigmatic, Mona Lisa smile, Darcy shifted her shoulder so that her dress strap fell down.  She heard his sharp intake of breath, and felt an answering shiver along her spine.

“Miss Lewis” he murmured, taking her hand in his.  “Or should I say….Madame Gautreau?”

“Kudos,” she said, giving him an appraising look.  Captain Rogers didn’t seem like the kind of man who would be into 19th century portraiture, but as the cliche goes, you should never judge a book by its cover.  “You’re the first person here to recognize my costume. And please, call me Darcy.”

Darcy tried to pull her hand back, but he tightened his grip enough to turn her hand over.  “I’m Steve,” he said simply, before placing a gentle kiss against the pulse point on her wrist and then finally releasing her hand.  

“Sargent was ahead of his time with Madame X,” Steve said conversationally.  “The scandal was worth it for him,” he said, brushing calloused fingers along Darcy’s shoulder as he dragged her dress strap back into place.

Darcy’s gaze darted down to her shoulder, where his large hand rested, thumb brushing gently against her collarbone.  Her brain short circuited momentarily from the heat radiating through her body, and words stumbled out of her mouth before she could catch them.  “Not if he wanted to work in France.  And what about the scandal for her? No one ever talks about the women in art.”

“You like art?” Steve asked her, a delighted look crossing his face.

“Love it, actually.  I started college as an art history major,” Darcy answered.

 

* * *

 

They ended up tucked away on a couch in the corner of the room, avidly discussing their favorite artists and movements.  She loved Bernini and his reformation of Rome, and Steve described how Dorothea Lange captured a life that few remembered the harsh realities of.  They argued over which ancient culture was the most fascinating - Steve stuck to classical Greece, while Darcy was firmly for Mesoamerica.  They both, however, loved Maxfield Parrish’s works, especially his illustrations for _Arabian Nights._ Darcy spent a good ten minutes expounding on Frida Kahlo and the brutal honesty of her self-portraits, while Steve had trouble finding the words to express his awe at seeing _Vincent on his way to work._

“Wait, wait….you saw that piece? When?” Darcy interrupted. “Because it’s been missing since 1945.”

“It would have been…’42, maybe? The Howlies helped the Monuments Men move a shipment of art to the Stassfurt salt mine between missions.”

Darcy stared at Steve in wonder.  “I am so jealous of you right now. You have no idea.”

Steve laughed, tipping his head back against the couch.  When he looked over at Darcy from the side of his eye, she was giving him an odd, assessing look.  He watched her study him for a moment, taking in the dusty boots and aviator’s jacket he wore, before puzzling over his face.  After a few moments, a satisfied look passed over her face and she relaxed back into the couch.

“I forgot how much I miss talking about art,” she sighed.

It was Steve’s turn to study Darcy.  Throughout the course of their conversation, she’d looked at _him_ \- not Captain America, but Steve Rogers, artist and art lover.  He’d almost forgotten what it was like to be seen as a person, not an icon.

“I forgot how much I miss making art,” Steve confessed.  “When I first saw you, you were leaning against a table in almost the exact same pose as Madame X, and all I wanted to do was meet you and then sketch you.”

Steve looked at Darcy as if she were the most clever and entrancing woman in the room, and for the first time in her life, Darcy actually felt like someone saw the true her. Not the perpetual intern girl, not the fuckup who let a spy in their house, not Jane’s assistant nor the tall-tale version of her from Thor’s retellings of their first meeting.  Not even just a reasonably hot girl with a great rack.

Steve looked at her and saw Darcy at her absolute best: clever, and elegant, and put-together in a way she almost never was.  And in return, Darcy looked at Steve and saw a man, with interests and memories and desires that any normal man might have, including the man who sometimes was Captain America.

And that was a more powerful aphrodisiac than any love potion in the world.  



End file.
